


I Give It Forever

by KaliopeShipsIt



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alpha Stiles, Alpha Stiles Stilinski, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cora is Not A Good Sister, Derek mpreg, Discussion of Abortion, Dysfunctional Family, Established Relationship, Family Drama, Flashbacks, Human AU, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Kid Fic, M/M, Miscarriage Scare, Miscommunication, Mpreg, No Actual Cheating, Omega Derek, Omega Derek Hale, Original Character(s), Pregnant Derek Hale, Sad Derek, Supportive Stiles Stilinski, Teen Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy, lots of them - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-03-07
Packaged: 2019-03-23 00:48:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 36,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13776153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaliopeShipsIt/pseuds/KaliopeShipsIt
Summary: In September 1993, after dating his 17-year old high school Senior Alpha boyfriend Stiles for only four short months, 19-year old Omega Derek Hale realized he was pregnant two weeks into his Sophomore Year at college, changing the course of both of their lives forever.25 years later, the youngest of their three children goes off to college and Derek and Stiles are looking forward to enjoying their freedom, finally able to once more devote their full attention to being a couple.Except, only four short months later and at almost 45 years of age, Derek finds himself unexpectedly pregnant again.Angst commences.Chapter 1 of this fic is a stand-alone story. Chapter 2 is a collection of additional head-canons that give some extra information about other characters' POVs throughout the story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf nor any of its characters.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not authorize for this fic to be posted anywhere else, whether this be GoodReads or another such site.
> 
> Disclaimer: WARNING, this story begins with a long-ass author's note - I know that's not everyone's cup of tea, but please bear with me, because the tags for this story made it necessary. 
> 
>  
> 
> My Lovelies!
> 
>  
> 
> This story is dedicated to my awesome loyal reader FicLogia, who can attest to my 50,000 WIPs and Headcanons because I keep bouncing them off her! A couple of weeks ago she gave me the following prompt and once I started running with it there was no more stopping:
> 
> "Stiles and Derek got together young because Derek got pregnant all of a sudden, and they got married and worked it out. They lived happily ever after and all that, they love their children. But Derek’s always carried this fear or insecurity that Stiles only ever stayed with him because of obligation or duty. When they finally find time to themselves, Derek thinks this is it. This is his chance to make it up to his husband and give him the fun, burden-free, responsibility-free romance he deserved. Because Derek always felt that he sort of stole Stiles from his carriage what with their age difference and all that. But then Derek finds out he’s pregnant again and he feels like he’s trapping Stiles all over again. Commence angst"
> 
>  
> 
> Now, before you dive into this story, I'm afraid you'll have to endure two WARNINGS, one short and another that is a bit more lengthy. Please bear with me though, I believe it's important :).
> 
>  
> 
> Firstly: This story takes place in 2018 but there are flashbacks throughout that talk about things that happened between 1993 and 2000, the seven years in which Derek and Stiles had their older three children. 
> 
> I did not set these flashbacks apart through Italics but they are woven into the narrative, sometimes jumping back and forth between paragraphs. This was deliberate. The story is told from Derek's point of view and Derek's mind is going all over the place for most of this story, so I wanted his turmoil to feel more tangible. 
> 
>  
> 
> Secondly: WARNING, WARNING, WARNING, please heed all the tags, but particular the discussion of abortion.
> 
> So far, I have largely stayed away from abortion discourses in my other stories, but I felt that not including it in this story wouldn't have done the nature of the prompt justice. 
> 
> The reason I'm not generally prone to putting abortion into my stories is relatively simple. 
> 
> Abortion is a horrendously complex topic, even for me as a staunch pro-choice advocate. As much as the right-wingers want to tell us otherwise, I am convinced that it is NEVER an easy decision, regardless of circumstances. 
> 
> Over the years I have noticed that when abortion is discussed in mpreg in particular, it can easily tip into very judgey territory. This, I feel, is not surprising. After all, I would estimate that for 99 percent of people the draw of mpreg is the characters actually going through their pregnancies and having their babies, whether that includes lots of angst or lots of fluff. 
> 
> When you consider that this is Sterek, there is even more potential for judgey undertones. After all, canon Derek lost his entire family AND he is a werewolf and wolves are all about pack and pups (though not in this fic, of course) so I think it's not difficult at all to set out writing a Sterek story including discussion of abortion from a pro-choice point of view, but accidentally ending up writing something rather pro-lifey and potentially triggering a lot of people.
> 
> I tried my best to stay aware of the complexity of this issue as I was having my characters share their opinions and thoughts, but if abortion is a trigger for you, please take steps to protect yourself :*.
> 
>  
> 
> Alas, without further ado: enjoy :).

_September 1993 – Stilinski Master Bathroom_

 

 

Thump. 

Thump.

Thump. 

Thump. Thump. Thump. 

“Oh for fuck’s sake, Stiles, will you _fucking stop pacing_?” 

Stiles froze instantly, whipping around and looking at Derek with that horrible, gut-wrenching expression of fear – _knowing_ – he’d worn on his face ever since Derek had shown up on his doorstep that morning.

Derek had waited until the Sheriff had left for the station, familiar with his Alpha boyfriend’s morning routine even though they’d only been dating for four months. 

He woke up at 6:30. 

He packed healthy snacks for John Stilinski’s lunchbox. 

He had breakfast with his dad. 

He reminded him not to drink too much coffee, eat donuts, or get shot before sending him out the door. 

He jerked off. 

He took a shower. 

He went to school. 

Derek had knocked on the door the second John Stilinski’s car had turned the corner, ruining Stiles’ masturbatory plans, mood, and – if he was right about this – his entire life. 

The funny thing was that Derek had actually thought about letting his boyfriend get one last good jerk in – a proverbial last meal for his gorgeous knot before Talia Hale would call on him to personally chop it off. 

Then his belly had clenched so violently he’d almost thrown up all over the rose bush he’d been hiding behind and his good will had vanished completely. 

So he’d knocked, nausea rising exponentially with his nerves. 

Stiles had opened the door, eyes lighting up with joy at Derek’s unexpected visit for all of point five seconds, at which point Derek had held up a rectangular box with a shaking hand, declared “I think I’m pregnant!” and effectively killed the romance.

Karma was a bitch, though, because Derek was currently harboring very dark thoughts about romance in general.

Particularly the kind of romance that led to first kisses during the annual end-of-the-school-year bonfire, a week of pining made barely tolerable by putting together mix-tapes, getting teased endlessly by heartless sisters while guarding the phone like a dragon guarding his hoard, taking walks in the park, eating ice-cream, playing footsie during dinner, heavy make-out sessions in the last row of the cinema, and then, _finally_ , getting rid of a month of pent-up sexual tension two hours later by making terrible life choices in the backseat of Stiles’ jeep.

Terrible, horrible, irrevocable life-choices.

In hindsight, Derek could not quite remember what exactly it had been about _Jurassic Park_ that had gotten him so hot and bothered. 

However, he distinctly remembered wondering how he’d ever existed without Stiles’ mouth on his and whether or not the heat of him between his thighs, radiating even through jeans, was the best thing Derek had ever touched. 

As it had turned out, it hadn’t been. 

The best thing Derek had ever touched had turned out to be the heat between Stiles’ thighs sans pants – thick, veiny, throbbing heat, slick with pre-come, and bare skin oh so velvety smooth as it had pushed into Derek, making him see stars and his toes curl. 

Bare skin. 

Fucking _bare_ skin. 

Technically, the possibility remained that it could have been Jeff Goldblum’s fault. 

Precisely, Jeff Goldblum’s raw sexual Alpha energy, his leather jacket, and his naked chest – a stimulating triumvirate of sin that had ultimately resulted in Derek crying out, sobbing, and panting praises to a deity he was reasonably sure he no longer believed in. 

Who was he kidding? 

It had definitely been the T-Rex. 

Of course it didn’t really matter anymore. 

What mattered now was that Derek’s pecs were killing him, his belly was sore and hard to the touch, he’d fallen asleep in three out of his eight classes during the past week, and he’d thrown up during the other five. 

What mattered now was that Derek was still on the two-months heat cycle common for young Omegas and should have gone into heat 21 days ago, which he could no longer explain away by the stresses of starting classes for his Sophomore year of college and either meant he was grievously ill … or completely, thoroughly, and not at all in the fun way fucked. 

What mattered now was that Derek had come home from his first year of college at the end of May, had made the decision to attend the high school’s bonfire for sentimental reasons, and had fallen head over heels in love with the cheeky incoming high school Senior that had literally stumbled into his lap, apologized profusely, proceeded to talk his ear off about his hopeless crush on _Beverly Hills, 90210’_ s Shannen Doherty, and then concluded that Derek’s eyes were prettier, at which point there had been sloppy kisses that had tasted like beer, sunshine, and rainbows. 

The only thing that mattered now, in fact, was that these first kisses had led to long whispered conversations on the phone at night, had led to more kisses, had led to dates, had led to Derek making the idiotic decision to lose his virginity on a 17 year old virginal high school Senior’s bare cock in the back of a jeep that had smelled like the left-over pizza they’d taken to go. 

The tragedy of it wasn’t that Derek had been clueless about safe sex. 

After all, he’d received his first sex-talk from his big Alpha sister Laura at the age of eight, complete with a book filled with illustrations that Laura had stolen from Uncle Peter and that he suspected she still hadn’t returned. 

He hadn’t been clueless about safe sex at all, actually, because every single adult and wannabe adult in his family had taken it upon themselves to make sure the first and only Hale-born Omega in three generations would make it through high school without a bun in the oven. 

They’d traumatized him with condoms pulled over bananas, assorted other fruits and vegetables abused in the same manner, and they’d educated him on anything heat-related from slick-consistency to mating-dens … except, apparently, the vital information that one could also – rarely but not impossible – conceive in the five days _leading up_ to one’s heat.

Or five days and twenty-three hours, apparently, because Derek was just _that_ competitive.

No, the tragedy of it was that Derek had been so panicked over what to wear that day that he’d simply forgotten to switch the condom from the discarded pants on the floor to the pair of pants he’d hastily pulled out of the closet at the last minute. 

Even more tragic was that Stiles hadn’t been packing either, because apparently he’d wanted to be a gentleman and had been delightfully taken aback when Derek had foregone propriety and decided to mouth on Stiles’ knot through his jeans in the last row of a darkened movie theatre. 

With the dulcet sounds of a T-Rex eating a dude on a toilet seat in the background.

Derek had never been one for traditional romances.

Why exactly they hadn’t just stopped at the convenience store across town on their way up to make-out point after, Derek would never know.

Well.

Derek did know.

It was easy, really.

They’d been painfully horny and the store would have been a 30-minute detour.

What had followed had been incredibly bad life choices, leading to going back to school feeling like something just wasn’t right, leading to counting calendar days in increasing panic, leading to coming in late for classes due to extended bouts of dry-heaving, and to lying awake at night trying not to touch his belly, because there was _nothing_ in it and this simply couldn’t be happening to him.

Except Stiles’ bare cock had, in fact, happened to him.

Twice.

And then again and again, as many times as they’d managed between July and the end of August, always careful to hide their activities from their respective families.

Ironically, they’d always used a condom after, an unspoken agreement between them to just never speak of that first time, that raw feeling of Stiles’ bare cock pushing in and out of him, pulsating inside him, and the brief flicker of panic in Stiles’ eyes when his knot had finally gone down and semen had trickled out of Derek’s channel, leaving a stain on the jeep cushions.

He hadn’t been in heat though and they’d both been virgins, so Derek had figured it had been okay.

Ha.

Ha to the fucking ha.

There was a stain on the wall opposite Derek now, too, and he cocked his head, wondering what could have caused that kind of colored stain in that particular place.

Not that he truly cared, per se, but focusing on stains of suspicious origins was a hell of a lot more soothing than focusing on the fact that he was a 19 year old unmated Omega three weeks into his Sophomore year of college who was currently sitting on the edge of a bathtub with shaking hands and a churning belly, while his 17 year old High School Senior Alpha boyfriend was pacing the room praying to the saints in Polish and letting out little whines every time he looked at the white stick on the sink.

Derek didn’t want to look at the stick either.

Derek _hated_ that stick.

Derek wanted to shove that stick somewhere where the sun didn’t shine, in fact.

The alarm clock Stiles had brought in from his bedroom chimed, loud and obnoxious, playing the _Star Wars_ theme song because it was a _Star Wars_ alarm clock from the toy store across town.

An alarm clock for a child.

Which was not surprising, because, at 17 years and a couple of months, Derek was, still, technically dating a child.

Depending on whether you marked the entrance into adulthood as your legal right to drinking _or_ wrecking the country with ignorant voting choices, _Derek_ himself was still a child.

A child who was dating a child and who was having … a child.

At least if the plus sign on the stick was to be believed.

Derek had no reason to doubt it.

After all, this was the fifth test he’d taken within the past 24 hours.

They were, simply put, fucked.

Judging by the wheezing sounds coming from the floor, Stiles was in full agreement.

 

 

================

 

 

_September 2018, 25 Years Later – Hale-Stilinski Residence_

 

Tap.

Tap.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Stiles?”

“Yes?”

“Why are you playing bongos on my butt?”

Stiles responded by squeezing the globes in question and Derek figured that he, too, had no idea why he was currently playing bongos on Derek’s butt.

“I was napping. You know that, right?”

Derek turned around, settling back in on the couch and spreading his legs so that Stiles could climb onto the cushions in between them without braining himself on the headrest.

Like last time.

Stiles grinned in reply, the tiny wrinkles around his eyes crinkling.

“Well, you know the drill, Derek. You flash that butt in my face, I have to do something to it.”

Derek shook his head, snorting.

“Except I wasn’t _flashing_ my butt in your face, I was napping. Fully-clothed, I might add.”

“Speaking of which – _why_?”

Stiles waved his hands around the empty living room and then teasingly pulled at the string of Derek’s sweatpants, shaking his head mournfully.

“Why?” Derek repeated, grinning when Stiles sighed heavily.

“Why? _Why_? We’ve got the entire house to ourselves now, that’s why! We can do anything we want without having to fear interruption! We could sit on the couch, naked, we could finally fix that crack in the wallpaper in our bedroom, naked, we could check the batteries of the smoke detector, naked, we could polish the silverware, naked, we could …”

“Seems to me the keyword here is naked,” Derek mused, laughing when Stiles flopped over dramatically and landed on his chest with a thud.

“That’s what I’m _saying_! Naked! You and I. Here, on this couch. Where we’re alone now. _Finally_!”

“We are indeed,” Derek mused, tapping a finger against his lips thoughtfully and barely able to hide his smile when Stiles let out a frustrated groan, pulled the collar of his shirt down, and nuzzle into Derek’s chest hair in protest.

“So? Why aren’t you naked yet?” Stiles said mournfully to Derek’s chest, words a little bit muffled by the hair Derek had stopped trimming a long time ago.

“Why should I get naked first? You aren’t naked either.”

“A tiny mistake that I shall rectify immediately!” Stiles declared, sitting up and pulling off his sweater with grandiose flourish.

Of course one could have also described it as a giraffe getting stuck in a pipe, but Derek was going to be nice about it.

A second later, Stiles’ red face emerged from his sweater and Derek quickly held his hands in front of his crotch when the Alpha put himself to the task of taking off his jeans and briefs, applauding himself for his foresight when a knee bumped against his hand.

25 years of experience had done that.

“So? Now what?” Derek asked when Stiles had finally gotten rid of his jeans and had knelt back down between Derek’s legs, eyeing him hungrily.

“Now? Now I’m going to rock your world! Except you’re still fully clothed and it’s a national tragedy!” Stiles declared dramatically, once more tugging at the string of Derek’s sweats.

Derek raised his eyebrow, lifting his head so he could look at Stiles’ feet.

“Were you planning to rock my world while wearing those white socks with the holes in them?” he asked conversationally, laughing loudly when Stiles twisted around to pull them off with an impatient huff.

“There was a time when I could get you very interested while wearing clothes with strategically placed holes in them. Where has the romance gone, Derek?”

Derek chuckled.

“Oh yeah, I remember. Thanksgiving 1996. We escaped from the living room and hid in my bedroom because Laura was wielding the shears for the turkey a little too enthusiastically while glaring at your crotch. Your dad and my mom were fighting over which football jersey Jack was supposed to wear and you decided to take advantage of them watching him and gave me an early Christmas present.”

“Now see that raises a question, though. What Christmas present are you referring to, exactly? My kick-ass striptease in my brand new ass-less chaps or the baby I accidentally put in you that afternoon?”

Derek frowned, considering.

“Definitely the ass-less chaps. Spending the entirety of Christmas Day either throwing up or getting yelled at by your dad and my parents for making the same mistake again didn’t exactly seem like a present at the time.”

Stiles winced, placing his hands on Derek’s belly and patting it apologetically.

“Oh yeah. You really did have a rough time with Bennett. I mean, I thought it was bad while you were carrying Jack, but with Bennett it was basically one long-ass Puka-Palooza.”

Derek shrugged.

“You know what they say, expect an Alpha, feel strong and triumphant. Carry an Omega, spend your life on the bathroom floor.”

Stiles grimaced.

“Anti-Omega bullcrap, that’s what they’re saying! Besides, I remember both of us feeling anything but strong and triumphant throughout your entire pregnancy with Jack. Pissing-your-pants-terrified? Yes. Having panic attacks and then having even more panic attacks on top of them because daddies aren’t supposed to have panic attacks? Yes. Almost failing the ACT because you were having some spotting and cramping and I thought our little life-ruiner was dead and I couldn’t concentrate on anything until I knew he wasn’t? Fun times! Triumphant though? Nah.”

Stiles shook his head, as if to clear it. Then he tugged at Derek’s shirt with more insistence and Derek decided to indulge him, raising his arms obediently and lifting his upper body off the couch so that Stiles could pull the shirt off.

“Now Gracie though … that was a triumphant time! Still some puking, mind you, that seemed to be kind of your thing, but all overall pretty damn triumphant!”

Derek rolled his eyes, lifting his hips and bending his knees so that Stiles could pull his sweats and underwear off of him without having to get up.

“Pretty sure the only thing triumphant about that pregnancy was that it was the only one that was … you know … actually _planned_. Otherwise, I blew up like a balloon and my face was one long ten-months breakout. Triumphant indeed.”

“Those were some very sexy breakouts, I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Stiles said, blinking his eyes at Derek in a way he clearly thought was seductive.

“Look who’s killing the romance now,” Derek deadpanned and Stiles threw his head back, Adam’s apple bobbing as he laughed.

Derek stared.

Beautiful wasn’t really a word society at large was comfortable with when it came to describing Alphas.

Handsome? Yes.

Rugged? Yes.

Strong? Yes.

Beautiful? Not so much.

Except that’s what his mate was, Derek thought, just as much now as he’d been 25 years ago at that bonfire.

His amber eyes were wide and doe-like, framed by sinfully long lashes that Derek knew most Omegas were jealous of. Derek’s eyes raked over pale skin dotted with moles and full, soft lips that the Omega still couldn’t go at least a day without feeling on his body.

Stiles was just as beautiful to him at 42 as he had been at 17, perhaps even more so, a little grey starting to pepper through his honey brown hair and soft lines on his face that spoke of the laughter they’d shared and the struggles they’d weathered.

There had been lots of laughter and joy, more than enough to balance out the struggles, but there had been bad times, too, ranging from slightly bad to – once, during the fall of 1998 that Derek didn’t like to think about much – really fucking bad.

“I give it a year,” his mother had said when he’d told her he was pregnant, holding on to a shaking Stiles’ hand so tightly he had almost bruised him.

She had said a lot of other things, too, yelling loudly and eventually bursting into disappointed tears.

There’d been harsh words said that day, accusations thrown at both of them, and Derek had taken the verbal onslaught up until his mother had heatedly suggested a solution to the problem, an option that he himself had already seriously considered and ultimately dismissed, though dismissed so thoroughly and completely that hearing the word in that moment had made his gut twist in agony.

They’d walked out on them, then, Stiles shaking and Derek fighting back tears, and he hadn’t spoken to his parents for almost three months after.

They had never spoken of it again, but Derek knew his mother would feel guilty for suggesting it in such a manner for the rest of her life, had seen it in the tears in her eyes when she’d held Jack for the first time at the hospital.

Stiles’ father had been equally upset about the pregnancy, though he had expressed his anger and disappointment in a different way, staying calm but voice tinged with bitterness as he’d asked them if they realized that they’d just fucked up their entire lives.

As terrible as these confrontations had been, they had also led to something good – mainly, the fact that Derek and Stiles had worked tirelessly in the past 25 years to prove them all wrong.

They had made it much longer than a year and they hadn’t fucked up their lives, either.

Slightly detoured, yes.

Maybe more than a slight change of plans in Derek’s case, if he was truly honest about it, but none of that mattered anymore.

They were both happy and thriving in their jobs, they had just paid off their mortgage, they had already managed to successfully put one child through college, one child half-way through, and their youngest had just left for NYU two days ago, getting into her dream school on a scholarship she had worked her butt off for.

They had made it through the horrible fall of 1998 and had come out stronger for it, they had worked through loud arguments, many of which had been born from exhaustion, and they had solved disagreements about finances and even bigger disagreement about raising their children.

They were in love, they were happy, and they were also – for the first time in 25 years – finally able to fully devote their attention to their marriage.

They had started dreaming about it in the months leading up to Gracie’s graduation, whispered conversations late at night about places they wanted to explore, vacations they were going to take, even renovations they had been putting off forever.

Derek loved his three children dearly, grateful for each of them despite the challenging circumstances that had surrounded the older two’s coming into existence.

He was beyond ready to finally be alone with Stiles, though, yearning to give him back all the time and attention he’d devoted to him in the four short months in which it had been just Stiles and Derek, during the summer of 1993 that had been so exciting and wonderful and had ended with so much anxiety, misery, and guilt.

They’d been a couple for four months and parents for 25 years and as much as Derek loved and adored his family, he was looking forward to shifting his attention back to being a couple.

Starting now, apparently, if his naked Alpha’s slowly filling erection was anything to go by.

Well.

Given his own growing erection and the soft throbbing inside his Omega channel, Derek could _definitely_ do that.

“Come here,” he said, pulling the Alpha down for a kiss.

Stiles complied immediately, long arms bracketing Derek as he moved his hips and ground into him, biting Derek’s lip and tugging at the same time.

Derek groaned, tilting his head back, and Stiles dove right in, licking and sucking at the sensitive skin, right over where he’d placed the mating bite in the spring of 1999.

Derek closed his eyes as the lips moved lower, strong fingers gently squeezing the sensitive extra skin of Derek’s lower belly, the only tangible reminder that he’d carried and birthed three children.

The lips moved even lower, teasing, teeth nipping at the soft skin of Derek’s inner thighs before they wrapped around his erection, still half-hard but quickly filling as Stiles hollowed his cheeks and began to suck, taking his sweet time and bringing Derek to the edge again and again, his long fingers doing toe-curling things to Derek’s Omega parts.

Yes.

They had all the time in the world now and Derek wasn’t going to miss another second.

 

 

================

 

_December 2018, Six Days Till Christmas – Beacon Hills Elementary_

“Late night, Derek?”

“Huh?”

Derek yawned again, shaking his head to clear the drowsiness away.

The teacher’s lounge was empty except for his favorite colleague Erica.

Erica was an Omega like Derek and she taught first grade, a job that Derek wouldn’t have taken if his life had depended upon it but that Erica adored despite all of her protestations to the contrary, her love of all things chaos fulfilled by screaming children running around like lunatics, proudly showing her the lice on their heads, climbing onto everything, and throwing up on her shoes.

Repeatedly, in fact.

Elementary schools weren’t discriminatory when it came to germs and illnesses, but the stomach flu was always the reigning champion, never more so than during the winter.

Derek’s three Alpha and four Omega fifth graders who were currently staying home and feeling miserable would have readily attested to that.

He yawned again, sniffing noisily after, and Erica shook her head, looking jealous.

“You’ve been yawning all through lunch, must have been a really, _really_ good night. You and Stiles truly _are_ making the most of having the house to yourself, aren’t you? I remember what that’s like. I think. I might be delirious though. For your information, I didn’t get any sleep last night either and I’m miserable! Remind me, why exactly did I think procreating was a good idea?”

“If memory serves, Boyd made a really convincing case for it with his knot and you were helpless to withstand his charms,” Derek answered and Erica nodded, her smirk turning into an expression of despair instantly.

“Bad night, then?” Derek asked and Erica let out such a world-weary sigh he had to bite his lip not to laugh.

“Never again! Thank god we made such a cute kid on the first try, because he’s the only one we’re ever going to have! I’m not going through teething again, mark my words!”

Derek chuckled, shaking his head.

“Never say never when it comes to these things, that just comes back to bite you in the ass,” he advised.

“Mr. Derek! Language!” Erica exclaimed in mock shock, her eyes twinkling as she shoved the last of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich into her mouth.

She swallowed, then grimaced, dusting the crumbs off her fingers.

“I don’t even like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but that’s the only thing the little monster will eat right now, so it’s the only thing edible in the house. I _am_ saying never, by the way, because Boyd had his appointment to get snipped on Friday. Unless he managed one last hurrah, Alex is stuck with only us for good. And I don’t see how he could have, really, given that the little cock-blocker has successfully delayed us from fulfilling our marital duties for seven weeks and counting now! Teething, ear infections, sniffles, more teething, explosive diarrhea, and even more ear infections! I tell you, never again!”

Derek grinned widely, leaning back on his chair and stretching and Erica huffed, glaring at him balefully.

“Don’t be so smug over there just because you and Stiles have got three kids in college and an entire mortgage free house to yourself to get frisky on every surface! In fact, I am not at all jealous that you’re yawning because of too much sex while _I_ haven’t slept more than three hours in a row for two years and don’t even remember what my Alpha’s knot feels like! Not jealous _at all_.”

She glowered at the table and Derek took pity on her, leaning over to pat her shoulder.

“It doesn’t last forever. I promise,” he said, delicately picking a chunk of peanut butter out of her hair and trying to sound encouraging.

Erica responded by letting her head thud onto the table dramatically, clearly expressing her disbelief.

“Pinky-promise,” Derek chuckled and Erica sighed deeply, though she turned to look at him with an expression that was part despair but also a little hopeful.

“I’ll hold you to it!” she said, lifting her head with a groan when the bell rang and signaled the end of lunch hour.

“Alright! Three and a half more days, gang, we can do this!” Erica declared, jumping up from her chair with renewed energy and heading towards the door.

Derek rolled his eyes fondly and hopped up as well, but unlike Erica he didn’t quite make it to the door.

Instead, he had to bend over and place his hands flat on the table, his vision suddenly swimming and gray spots appearing at the edges.

“Derek? Are you alright?”

Derek took a deep breath, then another, stubbornly willing the sudden dizziness away.

A second later Erica appeared right next to him, looking concerned.

“You’re white as a sheet! Are you okay? Should I call Boyd to come and give you a ride? He’s still at home recuperating from the surgery, but I’m sure he’s good enough to drive and there’s no way I’m letting you drive while you’re …”

“I’m fine. Really. I’m fine,” Derek said quickly, shaking his head and breathing out in relief when his vision cleared again.

“I don’t … I just got up too quickly, that’s all. The air’s been so stuffy in here, we should probably open a window.”

“Are you sure? You kind of look … I don’t know … different.”

“I’m _fine_!” Derek repeated emphatically, lifting his hands from the table and turning towards Erica, now that he was feeling steady on his feet again.

“See? All gone. Don’t worry about me. Go round up your little maniacs. I’ll be ok.”

Erica looked hesitant but when the bell rang again she shrugged, patting Derek’s shoulder.

“If you die because you didn’t listen to Auntie Erica that’s on you, so you better not come haunt me,” she said, throwing him one last concerned look as she walked out the door.

Derek took another deep breath, taking quick inventory of his overall condition.

He was no longer feeling dizzy but he _was_ tired, though that was something he was used to during the winter months, even mild as they were in California.

He grabbed for his mug and quickly downed the rest of his coffee, grimacing when his belly gave an unhappy little lurch.

Now that he was paying attention, his stomach was actually feeling a bit tender. He groaned, wondering if he could get away with something as dramatic as thudding his head against the wall in exasperation, now that he was alone in the room.

Stomach flu.

It figured.

Derek had been teaching elementary school since January of 1998, he was only two weeks shy of his 20 year work anniversary, and he’d built up an almost iron clad immune system in the two decades he’d spent with children coughing their germs all over him.

The thing with stomach flus was, however, that the nasty little suckers kept adapting, and every now and then even Derek’s stronger-than-a-horse’s stomach didn’t stand a chance.

He sighed, grabbing his water bottle and heading out the door, all the while praying that it was only going to be one of these 24-hour bugs.

It was only a week until Christmas, the children were going to be home in four days, and Derek had made _plans_ for these four days.

Plans that involved lots of nakedness and a Santa’s hat, because Stiles was still very much into him and they’d actually crossed quite a few items off of Stiles’ Kink-Bucket-List in the past four months.

“Behave,” he whispered, looking down at his stomach and patting it, figuring he’d better get on good terms with it before it decided to rebel against him like Princess Leia fighting against the Empire.

Five minutes later he was busy chewing out the youngest Whittemore girl for yet again forgetting her grammar homework and he’d forgotten all about it.

 

 

==================

 

_Five Days Till Christmas – Hale-Stilinski Residence, Bathroom, 1:20 AM_

Derek had been wrong.

His belly wasn’t the rebel alliance, it was the Empire, and _by god_ , it was striking back.

“Love?”

Stiles’ hair was sleep-mussed, one eye still partly closed and the other barely blinking open as he stuck his head into the master bathroom.

Derek groaned, resting his head on the toilet seat and turning so he could look at Stiles with a tired grimace.

“Run! Run for your life! This is not a drill!” he croaked, pressing his mouth shut and swallowing heavily when he could feel more bile coming up his throat.

Stiles snorted, looking like he regretted it instantly and Derek barely had the time to glare at his husband before he was bent over the toilet again, gagging noisily.

“Oh boy,” Stiles sighed, crossing the distance between them and kneeling down behind Derek, his warm, large hand patting his shoulder comfortingly.

“I mean it, Stiles, stay back! Almost one third of the students are in quarantine already, this shit is really nasty! You should sleep on the couch tonight. If you love your life, that is,” Derek mumbled into the toilet bowl, not in the least surprised when his Alpha didn’t budge even one inch.

“You always say that and I never catch it. Regular flu, yes, all the time, usually before you do, but I haven’t thrown up since the summer of 1993 and I doubt that’s going to change at this point. I think my muscles have forgotten how.”

“Don’t be so sure, it’s like riding a fucking bike!” Derek groaned, his throat clenching and unclenching as he began to dry heave.

“This does explain why you were so lethargic earlier, even though I was pulling out all my best moves,” Stiles mused, getting up and grabbing a washcloth.

“It’s probably a lost cause anyway, I’m sure I’ve already thoroughly contaminated you,” Derek declared when he leaned back, gratefully accepting the damp washcloth and wiping it over his sweaty face.

“You certainly tried your very best,” Stiles allowed, kissing the side of his head.

“Alright, up you go, let’s get you back into bed,” Stiles decided five minutes later when it seemed like Derek’s stomach was finally done turning itself inside out for the night, pulling him up gently.

“I still say you should sleep on the couch,” Derek protested half-heartedly once he was back under the covers but Stiles just shook his head, clucking his tongue.

“Silly man. When have you ever known me not to pester you when you were ill?”

The Alpha snuggled in closer, slipping his hand under the covers to gently rub Derek’s belly.

“Your stomach is feeling a little tense down here. Are you cramping?”

Derek shook his head, closing his eyes.

“Nah. Seems like it hasn’t reached my intestines yet. Can’t be long though, if what my students’ parents were telling me is correct. This flu really is a nasty son of a bitch, are you absolutely sure you want to risk getting sick as well shortly before Christmas?”

Stiles snuggled closer in answer and Derek gave up, figuring that his mate was an adult and responsible for his own gastrointestinal doom.

He breathed slowly, in and out, until exhaustion sent him into an uneasy sleep.

 

 

=================

 

_Five Days Till Christmas – Hale-Stilinski Residence Kitchen, 7:30 AM._

 

“You have _got_ to be kidding me! Derek Sebastian Hale-Stilinski, are you out of your fucking mind?”

"Good morning to you, too, my love,” Derek replied, pulling a travel mug out of the cabinet to pour in some coffee.

“Seriously? You’re really going to go to work after you spent forty-five minutes gagging and heaving in the bathroom last night? _Seriously_?”

“I feel absolutely fine this morning. It was probably just one of these 24 hours things, thank god. Hey, are we still on for date-night at the new Sushi place across town tonight?”

Stiles groaned, shaking his head disapprovingly.

“ _Fine_! I can see where my loving and concerned advice is not wanted. Yes my love, we are absolutely still on for Sushi date-night tonight, provided of course you even make it there and don’t keel over before because you went to work even though you were sick,” he snarked.

“Highly unlikely. I feel fine, I promise. I’m also running late, so I have to get going. See you tonight? At six?” Derek asked and when Stiles nodded he bent down to kiss his Alpha’s cheek quickly.

Stiles was working from home today, knee-deep in a new case that he needed to get some perspective on.

In theory, staying home with his husband didn’t sound all that bad.

Traditionally, Omegas were supposed to be the natural caretakers and nurturers, but Derek would have preferred Stiles taking care of him over himself any day of the week.

After losing his mother at the age of eight, Stiles had subconsciously taken over her role in the family, watching over his Alpha father’s diet, blood pressure, and drinking until taking care of others had become deeply ingrained into his personality.

Derek wasn’t opposed to spending the day on the couch, snuggled into a blanket, watching Netflix, and being waited on by his husband, who would have likely sat down with him, propped his laptop up on his knees, and spent the day working like this.

Therein lay the problem, however.

Stiles’ current case involved domestic violence and a child and perhaps Derek was a walking, talking embodiment of the anti-Omega cliché that said anyone of his sex wasn’t suited for law enforcement, but he had never done too well with cases that involved children – even if it just meant hearing about them.

He admired Stiles greatly for his ability to work as a detective and somehow separate the negative from his own family, but when Derek heard of physical violence against children all he could think of was someone hurting Jack, Bennett, and Gracie, disturbing images inside his head he simply couldn’t turn off.

It made his stomach clench just thinking about it and watching Stiles’ expression as he read through witness reports was not on top of Derek’s wish-list for the day.

Besides, he truly did feel better, still a little bit tired but no longer nauseous. Staying home wasn’t necessary and he wasn’t going to unnecessarily distract his husband from something so important.

He got into the car and took a sip of his coffee, grimacing and making a mental note to dump it once he got to school.

He hoped Stiles would make himself a fresh pot once he started working, because whatever vile concoction this was, Derek wouldn’t have wished it on his worst enemy.

 

 

_Beacon Hills Elementary – Teacher’s Lounge, Lunch Period_

 

Derek felt absolutely fine until he didn’t.

It came on so quickly he didn’t even notice until the bile was already rising up his throat and he barely managed to make it to the trashcan in the corner of the lounge in time.

“You! Nurse’s office! Right now!”

Principal Finstock was glaring daggers at him when Derek unstuck his head from the trashcan, still holding up the sandwich with the expensive Swiss cheese and the pungent, vile smell that had sent Derek sprinting across the room.

“But I …”

“This is a bug-free zone! We’re going to drop on Klendathu and fire a bomb on those motherfucking bugs in this motherfucking school!”

“Motherfucking … wait, isn’t that from _Snakes on a_ …”

“Derek,” Finstock spoke over Erica’s protest against his tendency to mix and match his pop culture references, fixing him with a serious expression.

“What do you get when you shoot a nuke down a bug hole? You got a lot of dead bugs, that’s what! So you are going to march your contaminated ass over to Nurse McPuppy-Eyes, get some medication, and then you are going to go home and I don’t want to see you here again until you’re back to feeling like roses and sunshine! No seriously, go, I already have an epidemic on my hands! I don’t need my teachers dropping, too. Go! Go, go, go!”

“Scott has my overprotective husband on speed-dial … can‘t I just go home and we can pretend this didn’t happen? I’m feeling a lot better now, see?”

“ _Go_!” Finstock huffed, tone leaving no room for argument. He looked genuinely concerned, however, much like Erica, and Derek resigned himself to his fate.

“Stiles won’t hear anything about this! You hear me?” were the first things he said when he entered the nurse’s office, fixing Scott with what he hoped was a stern expression but, realistically, was probably just the pinched look of a man trying not to vomit again.

Derek had known Scott McCall for 25 years, because he’d been Stiles’ best friend since the sandbox and the two would always come in a package deal.

Scott was 42 and an Alpha, like Stiles, and he’d been raised by a single Omega mother working as a nurse, which was one of the reasons why Scott had ended up going into nursing as well, despite the profession’s rep of being more of an ‘Omega’s job’.

He was mated to a snarky Omega named Isaac, who owned the best cupcake bakery in town and continued to puzzle Derek with his abilities to produce things that were so delicious and sweet even though every other word of out of his mouth was seriously salty.

They balanced each other out perfectly, however, Isaac’s dark humor paired with Scott’s sunny disposition, and they were godparents to Derek’s children, all three of which adored their uncles endlessly.

Scott and Isaac didn’t have any kids of their own, but Derek had always gotten the sense that having to baby-sit the Hale-Stilinski brood every now and then was about all the screaming, diaper changes, and discussions about bed-time that the two had been willing to stand.

However, Scott and Stiles being best friends also had its downside – namely, Scott’s trigger-happy speed-dial finger every time something bad happened in the school.

“Dude! It was one time! One! And you can’t really fault me for foregoing Nurse-Patient Confidentiality in favor of Bro-Duties when my best friend’s mate had a bleeding head wound because he heroically saved a child!”

“There was nothing heroic about pulling Jacqueline Whittemore out of the way when she tipped over the map stand in her attempt to find Greece in South America. Plus, it stopped bleeding in five minutes and I only needed a small Band-Aid! What I got, instead, was two days of rest and fluids and a husband fluttering around me like a moth on speed because you called him to tell him I had brain-damage and it takes him a while to regulate his protective Alpha hormones back to socially acceptable levels.”

“I promised it wouldn’t happen again and it hasn’t, right? So don’t you think you should stop holding this over my head? Eight years after the fact? What’s wrong with you anyways, Derek, you don’t look so hot. Stomach flu got you, too?”

Derek sighed, lowering himself onto the examination table without being prompted.

“Yeah. Seriously, don’t tell Stiles though. I threw up for a while last night but felt fine this morning and he gave me some serious stink-eye when I went to work. He’ll just add this to his list of things he pulls out every-time he decides to Alpha-hen me for my own good and I don’t need him to have more ammunition.”

Scott sighed disapprovingly.

“To be fair though, you do have an unfortunate tendency to martyr yourself when you’re sick, so he does have a point there. I’m sorry Derek, this flu is a stinker, I’ve had my hands full for almost two weeks now and it doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon. So close to Christmas, too, I feel bad for these poor children.”

He cleared his throat, fixing Derek with a more clinical gaze.

“What are your symptoms, then? Any diarrhea, cramping, or fever?”

Derek shook his head, resting his hand on his belly.

“No diarrhea yet, thank god. I don’t think I have a fever either. It’s really just the nausea and the vomiting. Oh, and I felt a bit dizzy yesterday, but that cleared up really quickly. No cramping, but my lower belly does feel a little bit hard. Stiles noticed it last night, too,” Derek reported.

Scott made a thoughtful sound.

“May I?” he asked, gesturing towards Derek’s middle, and Derek pulled his shirt up a bit, pushing down his jeans a little for good measure to give Scott better access.

Scott placed a hand on his forehead first, checking for obvious signs of fever. Then he gently pressed down on Derek’s lower belly, frowning in concentration as he moved his hands, his nose twitching as he sniffed.

“Anything else out of the ordinary?” he asked, tone neutral, and Derek let out a thoughtful noise, thinking back over the past days.

“No, not really. I had a couple of headaches this past week, but the weather has been changing a lot, so that’s not really unusual for me.”

“Any fatigue? Have you felt a stronger urge to pee, lately?” Scott asked, still with that neutral tone, and Derek chuckled, gesturing towards his surroundings.

“I work in an elementary school and it’s almost Christmas, of course I’m exhausted! The kids have been even more rambunctious than normal in anticipation of all those presents and candy, I’m sure we’re all wiped at this point. And I don’t think so? But I try to drink a lot of water anyways, so I wouldn’t have noticed. Why?”

“Just checking,” Scott said, removing his hands from Derek’s belly and pulling up his chair to sit next to the examination table, tapping Derek’s knee to get him to sit back upright as well.

He looked serious, way more serious than Derek thought a stomach flu warranted, and he didn’t like it, not sure what exactly Scott’s expression meant but feeling on edge regardless.

“So? Rest and fluids, am I right?”

Scott looked incredibly uncomfortable, heightening Derek’s anxiety.

“Let me ask you a question, Derek. It might seem a bit random, but bear with me. How have your heats been, lately?”

Derek raised his eyebrows, not sure what his heats had to do with the stomach flu.

“Fine? Nothing out of the ordinary. They’ve been a bit irregular since last year, but my OBGYN says that’s normal for an almost 45 year-old Omega. Why?”

“And your last heat? When was that?” Scott asked, still looking serious.

Derek shrugged.

“Uh … middle of September? I think. It wasn’t long after Gracie moved out, I remember that much, because it was the first time we had the house for ourselves during my heat and could be as loud as we … not important. September, definitely. I’ve had a pretty regular three-months cycle since my mid-twenties, so I’m guessing the next one is due at the end of this month. Maybe late January, I had two four-months cycles last year. Why are you interested in my heats, Scott? It’s just a stomach flu.”

Scott sighed heavily, rubbing his forehead.

“Did your OBGYN talk to you about the possibility of mini-heats?”

Derek frowned.

“Sure, we talked about all the symptoms of menopause during my last check-up. I’m not in menopause quite yet though, so it hasn’t been an issue,” he replied, looking at Scott in confusion.

Scott’s expression had taken a turn from uncomfortable, looking almost sympathetic.

“Okay, cool. Did she also mention that for some people mini-heats can start way ahead of menopause and that they’re really hard to detect if you’re still having regular or at least semi-regular normal heats? They’d be very mild, at first, barely distinguishable from feeling … how shall I put this ... just a bit hornier than average. Is it possible that you could have had one of these, lately? Maybe?”

Derek stared at him, shaking his head and ignoring the cold feeling suddenly spreading through his belly.

“… no?”

“I believe that you believe that,” Scott said comfortingly, expression deeply sympathetic now as he walked to his desk and pulled out something from one of the cabinets.

“I still need you to piss on this though. Just to make sure.”

Derek blinked.

Then he blinked again, staring at the white stick uncomprehendingly.

“What?”

“Derek,” Scott said gently, placing the test in his lax hand and grasping his shoulder.

“I’m not saying I’m right, and I’m probably not, because I know you guys are super careful, but please just humor me and piss on this stick. Just to be safe.”

Derek looked down at the stick in his hands, then back at Scott, then back at the stick.

“ _What_?”

Scott’s expression was that of a man who wanted to be far away, possibly on a beach in the Bahamas or sipping Mojitos on Cuba, return option highly unlikely for politically treasonous reasons.

Derek wanted to be there with him, or anywhere else, really.

Anywhere other than in this office, holding a pregnancy stick in his hands and chanting _No, no, no, no, no_ in increasingly shrill volume inside his head because this could _not_ be happening to him.

Again.

For the third time.

“No!” he said loudly, staring at Scott with pleading eyes.

“No. Dear god. No!”

Scott wordlessly handed him a bottle of water, eyes equally worried and fond.

Derek downed the water.

Then he peed on the stick.

Three minutes and twenty seconds later he started laughing.

Long, loudly, and eventually hysterically.

He was fucked.

Thoroughly, one hundred percent fucked.

 

 

================

 

_Four Days Till Christmas, Hale-Stilinski Residence, Bedroom, 3:45 AM_

 

It turned out, Derek wasn’t one hundred percent fucked.

Derek was, in fact, two hundred percent fucked, because he was a walking, talking statistic.

Multiple statistics, really.

Statistic number one being that about twenty percent of all Omegas started experiencing mini-heats about four to five years before going into actual menopause, mini-heats that were so mild at first that one could, in fact, barely distinguish them from just-above-average horniness.

Statistic number two being that out of these twenty percent of all Omegas, about eighty percent found themselves unexpectedly knocked up because of one of these early mini-heats, during which they weren’t mini-fertile, unfortunately, but in fact just _as_ fertile as during a normal heat.

Statistic number three being that, once Omegas had reached their mid- to late-thirties, their chances of conceiving multiples rose significantly.

Derek had not been aware of any of these statistics.

If he had been, he might have refrained from climbing his Alpha like a tree and riding him until he’d cried on Halloween.

He would have fought against the sudden and burning arousal he had attributed to Stiles parading around the house in a pirate’s outfit that had showcased his tight little butt and lithe form.

In fact, he would have actually given out candy, instead of ignoring all the knocks on his and Stiles’ front door that night in favor of chasing yet another orgasm.

At the very least, he would have forced Stiles to wear a condom, because they’d been religious about condom use during the entire month surrounding Derek’s heats since Derek had gotten pregnant accidentally not once but twice and they’d learned the hard life lesson that some Omegas could conceive up to 5 days before _and_ after their actual heat.

He would have done all of these things.

But he hadn’t.

Instead, he had gone into mini-heat without his knowledge merely seven weeks after his last regular heat, he had had a lot of glorious, toe-curling unprotected sex with his Alpha, and he was now once again carrying the fruit of their loins deep inside his belly.

Well.

Fruit _s_.

Because Derek was a walking, talking statistic and he was fucked.

Meaning that, at the age of almost 45, he was currently eight weeks pregnant with twins, confirmed by his trusted OBGYN, who hadn’t had any space for an emergency afternoon appointment, technically, but had made time for him when she’d seen his shell-shocked face and shaking hands.

She’d been blessedly non-judgmental during the examination and Derek admired her restraint greatly.

After all, he’d spent most of his last check-up talking excitedly about how nice it would be to finally have the house just to Stiles and himself again – or for the first time ever, really – and he even remembered joking with her about prescribing him the strongest birth control shot possible for his next heats because _haha_ , wouldn’t it be just _awful_ to have to start all over, now that they finally had the time to just be themselves again?

It had been funny then and both Derek and his OBGYN had shared a laugh, but there had been no laughter today at all.

In fact, Derek’s normally very friendly OBGYN hadn’t even cracked a smile once, but he suspected that was because he’d been shivering and pleading with her to tell him it was all a big hoax for the first half of the appointment, cried for the second half, and then breathed like a locomotive for almost ten minutes after Doctor Yukimura had dropped the twin-bombshell.

It hadn’t been his proudest moment, nor his most adult one, but then again, he hadn’t really made the most responsible adult life-choices lately.

As evidenced by the ultrasound image carefully hidden inside a folder in his workbag.

He’d felt numb when he’d left the doctor’s office and walked aimless around for a good half hour, until he’d finally come to rest on one of the benches in the park.

He’d stared at the duck pond with unseeing eyes for a while and then pulled out one of the leaflets about nutrition, eyes widening when he noticed that – compared to the last time he’d looked at one of these things nineteen years ago – the list of dangerous foods had increased exponentially.

Derek had slipped into practical mode, then.

He’d pulled out his phone, called the Sushi restaurant, and canceled their reservation, because as far as No-Nos went Sushi appeared to be a massive one and he wasn’t going to add even more risk to his already doubly high-risk pregnancy.

Then he’d texted Stiles and told him that he was coming home early because he’d started having some stomach cramps after all, and Stiles had texted back a sad face emoji and _tys,_ which Derek interpreted as “Told you so” and which had made him laugh bitterly because Stiles couldn’t have been farther away from the truth.

Then he’d driven to the store and gotten some ginger ale and ginger chews, because he remembered that working wonders with both Bennett and Gracie.

He had no data to compare from his pregnancy with Jack, but he’d spent so much of his first trimester in a state of total panic that he doubted anything could have soothed the nausea at the time.

He’d double-checked to make sure that the ultrasound image and the leaflets were hidden in his bag before he’d walked inside and Stiles had worriedly looked up from where he’d been sitting on the couch.

“Scott should have called me, you’re white as a sheet!” he’d grumbled, getting up and pulling Derek into a hug, and Derek had hidden his face inside the crook of his Alpha’s neck, emphatically disagreeing with the assessment in silence.

He’d sworn Scott to secrecy earlier, in between bouts of hysterical laughter and stunned silence, and Scott had promised, expression serious.

Scott and Stiles’ bromance was the stuff of legends, but this time Derek trusted that Scott would be on his side.

He was well aware that Stiles had talked Scott’s ear off about his and Derek’s now childfree and careless life just as often as Derek had fantasized about it over coffee with Erica, meaning that Scott realized that this was a major development with massive consequences for his and Stiles’ relationship and had to be dealt with between the two of them.

Stiles.

His smart, kind, strong, and beautiful mate, who was sleeping peacefully next to him and had no idea that Derek and his overly fertile Omega parts had gone and uprooted their lives yet again.

It wasn’t fair, in a way.

It took two to make a baby and Stiles had been an eager participant all four times.

He’d never forced Derek into anything and he’d never complained about the condom, as Derek knew many Alphas did. Nor had he insisted for Derek to go on one of the few available all-year-round birth-control shots, which, though effective 98 percent of the time, came with a list of side effects that Derek had never been comfortable with.

Birth control was a heavily regulated and heavily contested political issue.

It was a last ditch effort from the Alphatriarchy to fight against the tide of gender equality, a reminder of the 1950s, which had been the last decade in which Alphas had rested securely in the knowledge that their Omegas would never aspire for demanding careers that took them outside the home.

After all, the chances of a successful breeding during a heat were around 60 percent while Omegas where in their teens, 50 percent in their twenties, and still a comfortable 40 percent while they were in their thirties, after which the number started declining rapidly each year.

The uproar caused by the invention of the heat birth control shot in the early sixties still lingered in political debates, perhaps even more so today than a few decades ago, now that the statistics showed without a shadow of a doubt that birth rates were declining rapidly.

The heat-shots were effective, widely available, and easily affordable, to be administered at the first sign of pre-heat and protecting Omegas from unwanted pregnancies for up to ten days after, which was more than enough to prevent conception.

Conceiving just before the signs of pre-heat remained a rare possibility though, which was why many mated Omegas with regular cycles had their Alphas wear condoms starting a couple of days before they were expecting to go into heat.

The all-year-round shots were an alternative for those who were more paranoid, but the side effects were not to be underestimated, ranging from weight-gain to decreased libido to life-threatening circulatory issues.

Stiles had taken one long at the long list of side-effects and then went and bought an extra-large box of condoms, putting one on and parading around the bedroom while declaring they made him look quite sophisticated.

After all, the chances of conceiving outside the approximately 15-day-window that included the days just before, pre-heat, the heat itself, and the first couple of days after, were practically zero.

Maybe 0.00001 at the most, and Derek had never seen the need for messing with his ability to experience arousal and get wet for his Alpha, the latter of which would have been very unpractical and uncomfortable to boot.

So no, identifying Derek’s Omega parts as the repeat offender here was unfair, because they’d educated themselves when Derek had gotten pregnant with Jack and had taken the matter of birth control very seriously afterwards.

Except, of course, on Thanksgiving in 1996, when they’d conceived Bennett because they’d both ignored the fact that Derek’s last heat had been four and a half days ago and they’d still been within the five-day risk-window.

They’d still been very young and alcohol had been involved for both of them, since Stiles had finally turned 21. It had been a tense afternoon, because it hadn’t quite been long enough for the lingering resentment and issues that had been brought up over Derek’s pregnancy with Jack to no longer affect their family gatherings. So they had both been on edge, they had drunken a little too much wine, and Derek’s heat had felt like forever ago, which was why they’d been carless.

Also, ass-less chaps.

Which Bennett would never find out about, even if Derek’s life depended on it.

Still, they’d been religious about condoms ever since then, even though the fallout hadn’t been nearly as bad as with Jack.

Yes, his mother in particular had been upset about them making the same mistake yet again, with Stiles not yet out of college and Derek just about to enter the workforce, but her frustration had been short-lived, this time, born more out of worry than of actual anger.

She hadn’t suggested an abortion either, partly because Derek knew she would have thrown herself in front of a train for Jack and partly because he’d never seen his mother cry as she had when he’d finally gone to see his parents again after that explosive fight, clinging to him and sobbing desperately, as if she’d almost lost him.

Which was only fair – after all, she almost had.

The fallout had been less extreme, too, because Derek had already abandoned his career plans of going to law school just like Laura, and he’d been one semester shy of graduating with his education degree, a job he already knew then he was going to love and was ultimately much more suited for than being a lawyer.

Going to classes while suffering from heavy morning sickness for almost four months and being six months pregnant during an unprecedented May heat-wave while taking his last finals hadn’t been a dream come true, exactly.

It had, however, been far preferable to missing out on the entire spring semester of 1994 in favor of sitting on a perpetually disappointed John Stilinski’s couch, with an ever-growing belly and ever-growing worries as he’d watched Stiles distractedly stumble through his last months of high school.

So yeah, Bennett had been on both of them, because both of them could have bothered to check the date.

Jack though … Jack had been all on Derek, and now, his chest sore and his belly tight with yet another unplanned pregnancy, Derek couldn’t stop the guilt from rolling over him, crashing into him like waves.

He’d gotten the safe sex lectures.

He’d known about sexually transmitted diseases.

He’d also known that he’d been only days away from a heat, unlike Stiles, who, Derek knew now, had been hesitant to bring up the topic of heats because he’d already gotten the gist that Derek’s family was very much against sharing heats outside of a mate-bond and he hadn’t wanted Derek to feel pressured.

It was a shame, really … if Stiles had actually helped him through his heat that summer, then at least the pregnancy wouldn’t have come as such a shock to everyone.

Granted, Derek _hadn’t_ known that one could get pregnant outside of a heat, but he was sure that Stiles would have found out about it if he’d just mentioned it, since he’d been more than diligent about protection _after_ Derek had spent a grueling three-day heat alone and yearning for his Alpha that summer.

And sure, Stiles could have insisted on the condom before, too, but he’d been a nervous, horny, and excited 17-year old virgin and Derek had been the only legal adult in the car.

They had never spoken about fault between them, ever, but Derek assumed that Stiles’ views on the matter mirrored his own.

Stiles let out a little sigh next to him, smacking his lips in his sleep, and Derek thought about crying, not sure whether it was hormones or actual sadness.

A little bit of both, probably, since he felt literally gutted when he thought about what he’d already taken from Stiles and what he was now going to have to ask from him again.

He’d been a virgin in the technical sense until the night he’d gotten pregnant, but he had experimented some during that one year he’d spent as an unattached and carefree Freshman at college.

He’d made out with a couple of Alphas and one Omega, he’d let a smart and sexy Alpha feel him up on a couch in the dark corner of a frat house, and he’d sucked on another Alpha’s knot just before going back to Beacon Hills, doing a rather sloppy job of it but cheeks still glowing with pride at the Alpha’s breathy praises.

He might have only gotten one year of the college experience, but he had gotten it.

Not just that, he’d also experienced his Senior Year of high school the way it was meant to be.

Worrying about standardized tests, then celebrating to be finally free of standardized tests.

Playing sports, earning his varsity jacket, enjoying life, and experiencing a wonderful evening at prom with his high school sweetheart Paige, who had wanted to save her knot for her eventual Omega mate but _had_ let him stick his face in between her breasts and nuzzle against them at the end of the night.

Stiles though … Stiles hadn’t gotten any of that.

Stiles’ childhood had ended abruptly in the first week of his Senior Year, when the first Omega he’d ever kissed had shown up on his doorstep shaking like a leaf and then a little plus sign had shown up on the pregnancy test.

Stiles had spent his Senior Year worrying about the baby inside Derek’s belly rather than tests and grades, enduring mocking on top of it all because the fact that the Sheriff’s kid had knocked up the mayor’s only Omega child had spread around town like a wildfire.

He’d had to drop out of Lacrosse to be able to work two jobs to save at least a little bit of money for them not to have to depend on their parents for everything, and his prom date hadn’t been a happy, svelte Omega, but a 39 weeks pregnant Derek.

Precisely, a 39 weeks pregnant Derek who’d been tired, cranky, and miserable because his heavy belly had been achingly tight from seemingly constant bouts of Braxton hicks and who hadn’t even been able to dance with him because his back and feet had been dying a slow, torturous death.

Stiles had even missed his graduation ceremony because Derek had gone into labor eight hours before, and while his classmates had proudly walked the stage to accept their diploma, Stiles had been stuck feeling helpless and scared in a sterile hospital room with Derek, surrounded by nurses who had barely hidden their judgment.

They’d both been so terrified and Derek had been in so much pain, wanting his parents – his strong and protective _mother_ – but knowing that having them in the room with Stiles would have likely ended in disaster, an explosive combination of two Alphas on edge.

So he’d cried, screamed, and panted, mostly out of the agonizing pain but also because he’d been so fucking terrified of what was going to happen next and Stiles had gripped his hand tightly, looking like he was constantly fighting tears himself.

Seeing Jack for the first time had made it all worth it, of course, Derek’s parental instincts kicking in almost instantly, but the 18 hours before had been horrible and Derek didn’t like to remember them much.

What Derek had always felt most guilty about, however, was that Stiles’ slipping concentration during the first half of the year had knocked down his GPA enough that, when the time had come to apply for schools, he hadn’t gotten into the one he’d had his heart set on for years and had had to settle for Derek’s college instead.

It had seemed practical at the time.

The college had offered a wide range of criminal justice degrees and them living together had allowed Derek to continue with his education once Jack had been old enough to no longer be attached to him 24/7.

It had saved them a lot of money, too, because instead of enrolling their son in a pricey daycare, Derek and Stiles had been able to coordinate their class schedules so that someone had always been with Jack.

Jack hadn’t been the most difficult of babies, technically, but their little firstborn Alpha son had screamed bloody murder if anyone other than Stiles or Derek had held him for almost eight months, so they hadn’t even felt comfortable enough to get a babysitter.

Stiles’ college experience, therefore, had been going to class and then rushing home to take care of his baby, waiting for him to fall asleep so he could do his course work, and then going to class again.

Then Derek had gotten pregnant again three months into Stiles’ Junior year of college and any remaining hopes Stiles might have had to have more time to devote to his studies had flown out of the window.

He’d muddled through, though, sometimes only on sheer determination alone.

He’d tried his best to be there for Derek as his Alpha during his pregnancy with Jack while keeping himself from failing high school.

He’d been a wonderful father to Jack and a supportive mate for Derek while juggling classes and homework for college, and he’d kept his 4.0 GPA up even during his Junior Year, when he’d had to take care of Jack practically 24/7 during the four months in which Derek hadn’t really done anything other than vomit or go to class trying not to vomit.

He’d even gotten on the Dean’s list twice during his Senior Year, in which they’d had to juggle a rambunctious 3 year old, an infant, and Derek starting to work at Beacon Hills Elementary, at which point they’d moved back to their hometown and Stiles had taken to commute three hours everyday to attend his final classes.

More often than not, he’d sat through lectures with a sleeping Bennett strapped to his chest, successfully co-parenting at the price of getting stared at constantly … never quite able to escape the stigma of being an underage Alpha-dad, even after he’d already turned 21.

He’d graduated with honors in early May of 1998, a week after Jack had turned four, and Derek had been so incredibly proud of his mate and relieved that the worst of it was finally over that he’d missed quite a few things brewing under the surface, leading up to the eventual explosion in the fall of 1998.

To this day, Laura and Cora believed that Stiles had slept with another Omega and they had never quite forgiven him for it, even though Derek had believed his Alpha’s denial then and he still believed him today.

What he did believe, however, was that Stiles had come dangerously close.

He’d been burnt out, exhausted from four years of nonstop running, worrying, and working his ass off. Then he’d graduated from college and hadn’t immediately found a job, because the Sheriff’s station in Beacon Hills had been overstaffed and his father would have had to let someone go to hire him, which Stiles couldn’t have lived with.

So he’d applied to the different law departments in driving distance and each rejection had crippled his soul even more, until he’d crashed.

Hard.

Not outwardly, which was why Derek, busy with their two children and his new career, had severely underestimated how on edge their relationship had been, taking Stiles’ support for granted in a way he now knew had been incredibly selfish.

Stiles had crashed on the inside though, exhausted, worn-out, weighed down by too much responsibility that he’d taken on at a too young an age.

He had felt miserable, alone, and when he hadn’t gotten what he needed from Derek he’d gone and sought comfort elsewhere.

Her name had been Malia and she’d been a waitress at Stiles’ favorite café, where he’d spent many hours drinking coffee, writing applications, and watching Bennett while Derek had been working and Jack had gone to pre-school.

She’d been sassy, sharp-witted, and attractive, and Stiles had felt drawn to her, spending hours talking to her and lamenting about his situation. He’d been so drawn to her that he hadn’t stopped her when she’d written her number on the folder of one of his applications, adding a heart next to it.

Derek had seen it two days later, while Stiles had taken a nap and he’d decided to proofread his latest application, feeling upset because Stiles’ unemployment was making him increasingly unhappy and just wanting to help as best as he could.

Seeing the heart had been a punch to the gut and he’d reacted badly, also worn out and easy to trigger after four years of constant stress and worry.

There’d been yelling and screaming, so loud that they’d woken up and scared the children and the upstairs neighbors had threatened to call the cops.

Stiles had been so offended, repeating again and again that he’d never touched Malia and that Derek was horrible for even accusing him of it, that Derek clearly didn’t trust him after everything he’d done for their family and that maybe they weren’t meant for each other after all, if this was all it took for him to lose his shit like that.

Derek, meanwhile had felt betrayed but also insecure, unable to stop himself from comparing his body to Malia’s, who was athletic and strong and neither had softened thighs nor a chubby belly still swollen with those last pesky pregnancy pounds Derek hadn’t found the time or energy to shake yet.

He’d been young and dumb, had basically been his problem.

On the topic of his body-insecurities, at least.

As far as the betrayal went, Derek knew deep in his heart that his beloved Stiles had come very close to doing just that and the fact that he _hadn’t_ taken her up on her offer hadn’t actually made a difference to him at the time.

Stiles hadn’t taken Malia up on her offer, but he hadn’t discouraged her either, and the idea of what could have eventually happened if Derek hadn’t seen the heart had almost eaten him alive.

So he’d done what he’d thought he had to – he’d taken his children and rented a room in a motel.

He hadn’t gone back to his parents or sisters, oh no, because he remembered “I give it a year” very well and he didn’t think he could stand to hear it again.

Instead, he’d pulled himself together long enough to wait until a confused and scared Jack and a fussy Bennett had finally fallen asleep before he’d curled up on the other bed in the dirty motel room smelling of cold cigarette smoke, silent sobs wrecking him until his belly had hurt with them.

Stiles, he now knew, had gone to his dad to cry on his shoulder and received a couple of very hard life-lessons instead.

He had shown up at the motel three days later, eyes red-rimmed and looking frailer than Derek had ever seen him.

After three days of no sleep, barely eating, and lots of crying, Derek hadn’t looked much better, and they’d held each other for hours, neither knowing exactly how to fix this but determined to never, ever, go through something like this again.

Derek didn’t know what, exactly, the Sheriff had told his parents, but they’d stepped up their babysitting game noticeably in the late fall and winter of 1998, taking the boys off their hands as often as they could and allowing Stiles and Derek to not just take a breath individually but spend time together as a couple.

Also, Stiles had never gone back to the café and Derek hadn’t been able to set foot in it since then either.

It had taken more than a few weeks for things to feel normal again between them, but then Stiles had finally gotten his first deputy job when a spot in the Beacon Hill’s Sheriff’s department had opened up and he’d been truly happy again for the first time in months.

When he’d finally asked Derek for a mating bite to bond them together in every sense of the word in March of 1999, Derek hadn’t hesitated to say yes.

They’d been more in love than ever in the spring of 1999.

Jack had been enjoying kindergarten, and Bennett had been walking and talking, loving his daycare despite Derek’s worries that his friendly but shy second child would have a hard time there.

So maybe it hadn’t been the most sensible decision to add yet another child to their family, financially or otherwise, with Stiles being 24 and already considering going back to school for a Master degree and Derek being 26 and getting established in his career.

Still, when Stiles had brought up the idea two days before Derek’s heat had hit that April, looking hopeful and, a little, like he wasn’t quite sure if he had gone insane, Derek had thrown out his birth control shot and agreed to start trying.

Gracie had been conceived only two days later, but still, she _had_ been planned.

Derek and Stiles had smugly emphasized that point when they’d broken the happy news to their families.

Being pregnant with Gracie had come with its own challenges.

Granted, he hadn’t struggled with morning sickness quite as much as he had with both Bennett and Jack, but his face really had broken out seemingly every week and he wasn’t exaggerating when he said that he’d blown up like a balloon while carrying their only girl.

Water retention had truly made him its bitch, swelling everything from his fingers to his toes to his buttocks and, of course, his belly, which had looked and felt to him like he’d been carrying triplets rather than the delicate, tiny six-pound Alpha girl who’d slipped out of him almost like it had been nothing at the end of February 2000.

Still, Stiles had doted upon him endlessly, and Derek had gotten a bittersweet glimpse of what it could have been like.

They’d both had steady jobs, they’d been hunting for a house, and they’d had to take care of a five-year old and a two-year old, so the pregnancy had flown by almost in the blink of an eye, on some days little more than an afterthought, even.

However, there’d been some quiet moments, too, in the darkness of the night when the children had been asleep, and later, after they’d moved into their house at the beginning of Derek’s third trimester, during the weekends, when the boys had been with their grandparents and they’d had some time for themselves.

Stiles had been wonderful, reading his desires in his eyes before he’d gotten a chance to voice them. He’d been affectionate, too, spending hours and hours kissing and stroking Derek’s belly, giving him massages, and talking to the baby.

Their sex life had been great, too, at least until the ridiculous size of Derek’s belly had put a stop to it, and without worries weighing him down left and right, Derek had enjoyed those soft, intimate moments much more than he could previously remember.

It had been only glimpses, but it had been enough for Derek to know that this was what it should have been like with Jack and he had grieved for the lost time, though he’d never said a word to Stiles.

Things would be very different, now.

Derek let out a shaky breath and got up, careful not to wake his mate as he slipped out of the master bedroom and into the bathroom, locking the door behind him for the first time in their entire relationship.

He stepped in front of the mirror and pulled off his shirt, turning sideways a little and studying his reflection.

Unlike his moderate weight gains of eight and fifteen pounds respectively when he’d carried the boys, he’d gained almost forty non-baby related pounds while he’d been pregnant with Gracie.

He’d managed to slim back down easily after Jack, being barely 20 and all, and he was reasonably sure he’d only held on to his little belly chub as long as he had after Bennett’s birth because he’d started a new job and done a lot of stress eating during those first terrifying months.

Losing the forty pounds had been a bitch and a half, though, and it had taken him almost four years to do so.

Stiles still lamented the loss of Derek’s plushier buttocks, but Derek simply hadn’t felt like himself until he could run ten miles without getting out of breath again and Stiles had eventually conceded that a happy mate with a slightly bigger than average butt was far preferable to a sad mate with lots of junk in the trunk.

Now, at 44 going on 45, Derek’s fitness was above average for his age group, he was proud to say, his thighs and arms muscular and his back and chest firm.

He had some wrinkles around his eyes and his laugh lines were a bit more pronounced than they had been, his beard sprinkled with grey and some grey in his hair as well, but his body was strong and capable, leaving much younger Omegas and quite a few Alphas in the dust during the annual Beacon Hills half-marathon ten years in a row now.

He was in good shape, maybe not as good as when he’d been 18 but still pretty damn close, but his pregnancy with Gracie had left him with a permanent little belly bulge, more extra skin than actual fat.

Sometimes it was a bit more pronounced and sometimes less, but it was a permanent reminder that he’d carried and birthed three children, etched into his skin as much as the few stretch marks on his sides, barely visible nowadays and only ever noticeable when he touched them directly.

He let his hand trail down his belly, letting out a heavy sigh.

There was no mistaking it, now that he was really paying attention to it.

His belly was already swelling; the little bulge tight and visibly more pronounced than it had been in a very long time.

He wasn’t surprised that both he and Stiles had missed it, since both of them were used to his slight weight fluctuations by now, depending on where he was in his heat cycle.

If Stiles hadn’t been expecting him to be cramping from the stomach flu he didn’t actually have, his mate might have paid more attention to how unusually tight Derek’s belly was, but for now the ‘stomach flu’ served as a good excuse, giving Derek desperately needed time to collect himself enough to be able to tell Stiles without falling apart completely.

He was also grateful that it had been so long since Stiles had seen him pregnant, because he might have noticed it then, too, had it not been almost nineteen years.

Nineteen years.

That number made Derek feel lightheaded and he had to sit down on the toilet lid, hands pressed against his thighs.

Jack was 24 years old, Bennett had recently turned 21 and Gracie was 18 going on 19, no more than a five and half year distance between his oldest and youngest.

They’d grown up like siblings, playing together and fighting together, especially Jack and Gracie, because Jack had been a Senior in High School when his baby sister had gone into puberty and started testing out her Alpha dominance against her big Alpha brother.

They were close though, much closer than Derek had ever been to his sisters, and it was one of his and Stiles’ greatest joys to see the love between their children, the knowledge that they’d have each other’s backs long after their parents were gone.

Even though the very word ‘twins’ still made Derek start shaking and the fact that he was pregnant at all still felt like a punch to the gut, Derek was actually relieved that there were two ‘oopsie babies’ growing inside him right now, all things considered.

He could barely imagine what it must feel like for a child to have three siblings but effectively be an only child and he fiercely hoped that his new babies would love each other just as much as his older children did.

If indeed he ended up having them at all.

Derek let out another shaky breath, squeezing his eyes shut and cupping his belly with both hands.

Doctor Yukimura had been as gentle as she could when she’d talked about all of his options and what could happen next and Derek had thought about little else ever since he’d gotten back from the park, pretended he was tired, and hidden in their bedroom, taking advantage of the fact that Stiles was still engrossed in his work. 

He’d burrowed under the covers, popped a ginger chew into his mouth, and pressed his hands against his belly, thinking about it.

If he went through with it, his pregnancy was going to be considered high-risk. He would be 45 by the time he gave birth, he was carrying twins, who tended to come early, and he would likely end up on bed-rest by the time he was in his third trimester.

His age also put the babies at a higher risk for a long list of illnesses and symptoms and he wouldn’t know for sure if they were one hundred percent healthy until at least twelve weeks from now, maybe not even then.

That, though, was a possibility that Derek wasn’t even going to think about, because there was absolutely nothing he could do to change it if it was the case and he wasn’t going to let that factor into his decision.

Into _their_ decision, he reminded himself, staring into the bathroom mirror and stroking his belly.

They weren’t just his babies, they were Stiles’ babies, too, and Derek had to bite his lips shut to keep from laughing bitterly because who was he kidding – he had already made the decision for both of them.

Maybe that wasn’t okay – it probably wasn’t – but he couldn’t think about that right now, too, too exhausted, afraid, and upset.

The fact of the matter was that Derek had made his choice the moment the babies had shown up on the ultrasound, little more than tiny blobs that were getting ready to wreck all his careful planning once again.

Derek.

Derek, Derek, Derek.

Derek’s failure to recognize he was going through a mini-heat.

Derek’s body ignoring the fact that he was almost 45 and gearing up for one last hurrah of fertility.

Derek’s decision to keep the babies without consulting Stiles first, even though all he wanted to do was cry and rage at the universe for doing this to him yet again.

Above all, the doubt, growing quickly inside his mind now that he was staring at his pale face in the reflection of the mirror.

For four short months in the summer of 1993 it had only been Stiles and Derek, four months in which they’d shared their hearts, bodies, and souls, but that hadn’t nearly been enough time to truly get to know each other.

Not to mention that they had, quite likely, been too young to truly know themselves at the time.

Stiles had his faults and so had Derek, and even though they didn’t argue all that much, there were definitely points of contention between them that kept popping up, even after 25 years together.

Would any of these issues have been a deal-breaker if Derek hadn’t gone and gotten knocked up barely two months into their relationship?

Would they have broken up eventually if their relationship had developed at a more normal and traditional pace, without a baby in the picture?

He wanted to say no desperately, but now, wide-awake in the early hours of the morning and still in shock over being pregnant, Derek wasn’t sure at all.

If he was honest, he hadn’t been sure for as long as he had allowed himself to think about it. 

Which wasn’t often, of course.

They were happy, after all.

And yet … he’d gone and done the exact same thing again, hadn’t he?

For four short months it had been only Stiles and Derek again, and he’d gone and gotten knocked up just two months into their new normal.

Had he really, truly not noticed he’d gone through a mini-heat?

Or had his subconscious known?

Wasn’t it in fact possible that some part of him had always been terrified that Stiles had, in fact, only stayed with him because of the children, loving him out of habit and convenience rather than actual, deeply held emotion?

Could it be that this very same part of him had been shaking in terror at the idea that Stiles, now that the last of their children had left the nest, would no longer feel burdened by the responsibilities of raising a family with Derek and would go look for happiness somewhere else, now that he no longer had to feel guilty for leaving a family behind but was still young enough to enjoy life to the fullest?

Could it also be that this part of him had deliberately ignored the signs of heat and instead went and once again shackled Stiles to him through an unexpected pregnancy?

Derek’s chest hurt and he grasped at it, not even sure if it was the pregnancy or his heartache.

He loved Stiles, wholly and completely.

He always had and he always would and he knew that Stiles loved him, too.

He was also very well aware that accusing his mate of anything else was unfair, born out of self-pity and fear.

It was almost cruel, even.

And still … Derek had been older.

Not by much, but he _had_ been older.

He’d been supposed to be the responsible one, and even though he had also missed out on a lot of things, Derek had always felt that Stiles’ sacrifices had been greater.

A small part of him had felt guilty for the past 25 years and now he’d gone and added at least 18 more years to the burden.

More so, he’d made the decision without Stiles’ input, because terminating the pregnancy was not an option for him and he desperately hoped that Stiles wouldn’t consider it one either.

And if he did … if he truly didn’t want to have more children with Derek … well … that was a bridge they’d have to cross later.

And he’d respect Stiles’ choice in the matter, he told himself, even if it meant that he’d be left to raise the babies alone.

He owed him at least that much.

Right now, all Derek could do was hope with all of his heart that Stiles would find it in himself to be happy about this.

Eventually.

He rubbed a hand over his eyes and then looked at the clock on the wall, breath punching out of him in shock when he realized it was already 5:45, only thirty more minutes until his alarm would ring and signal the end of the night.

Derek hadn’t gotten a single second of sleep and his belly was churning nauseously once more, possibly because of his dark thoughts but more likely because he was eight weeks pregnant and his morning sickness had been at peak point with all three children between weeks eight and twelve, continuing well into week 19 in Bennett’s case.

He sighed, rubbing his belly.

He didn’t have the stomach flu after all, so he could go to work today, technically.

It wouldn’t be the wisest decision he’d ever made, given that he hadn’t slept and was already running on fumes as it was.

The alternative, however, was spending the entire day trying to hide his emotional state and physical condition from Stiles, who was already planning on another home-office day.

Derek didn’t think he would be able to pull it off.

His gaze swept through the bathroom, catching on the Santa hat hanging from one of the hooks on the door.

Christmas.

His older children would come home in two days to celebrate Christmas with their parents, and for as much as Stiles loved having the house to themselves, Derek knew that his mate had missed the children dearly and had been looking forward to Christmas with the enthusiasm of a little boy for weeks now.

Telling Stiles before Christmas would undoubtedly ruin the mood and he couldn’t do that to his mate or the children, especially Gracie, who’d struggled with a little bit of homesickness over the course of the semester and was already bouncing with excitement at the idea of coming home.

Derek wanted to give his older babies the peaceful and carefree Christmas they’d been looking forward to and he wanted just a couple more days for Stiles to enjoy his new freedom before he went and ruined it by telling him about their new babies.

So he was going to pull himself together. He was going to smile, he was going to laugh, and he was going to keep the pregnancy to himself just a little while longer.

It would be fine.

He could do this.

 

 

==================

 

_Three Days Till Christmas – Hale-Stilinski Residence – Downstairs Bathroom 4:50 AM_

 

Derek could definitely do this.

It was rapidly becoming clear to him, however, that it wouldn’t be fine in any sense of the word.

He’d dragged himself through his work-day on sheer determination alone, had smiled through Stiles’ worried inquiries at breakfast, convinced Finstock that he didn’t actually have the flu, avoided both Scott and Erica all day to keep from talking about what was actually going on with him – though Erica had no clue, he knew she knew _something_ wasn’t right – and he’d even managed to keep his fifth graders entertained for the entire day, even though he was reasonably sure that the youngest Whittemore girl had been giving him some serious side-eye by the time the final bell had rung.

Then he’d gone home and crashed on the couch, falling asleep instantly and waking only when Stiles had gently shaken him awake at ten and suggested he might want to actually go to bed before he strained his neck beyond repair.

His Alpha was worried, that much was obvious, so Derek’s great plan to keep Stiles from noticing that something was wrong clearly needed some adjustments.

He’d promised himself to do better the next day, but then he’d woken up at 3:20 AM feeling nauseous and achy and he had vacated the bed in favor of the downstairs bathroom, where he’d been retching and dry-heaving to his heart’s content ever since, not having to worry about being quiet because there was little chance of Stiles hearing from upstairs.

On the plus side, his quick thinking had kept his mate from waking up and noticing Derek’s latest sacrifice to the porcelain gods, which would have likely ended with him chaining Derek to the bed to stop him from going to work again in about two and a half hours.

On the downside, Derek was rather alarmed about the recurrence of this nocturnal variation of morning sickness, which he had never experienced with the older children and which he wasn’t loving one tiny bit.

It wasn’t fine, but he was still sure he could do this.

He’d just have to try harder than he’d thought.

 

 

===============

 

_Three Days Till Christmas – Beacon Hills Elementary, 3:30 PM_

 

“Surprise!” 

Derek almost dropped the can he’d been using to water the class cactus, almost done with cleaning up his classroom so that it would be tidy when the kids came back after Christmas break.

A second later, Gracie was wrapped around him, her long black hair flying every which way when she smacked a kiss on his cheek.

“I missed you Papa!” she exclaimed, snuggling against him contentedly, and Derek wrapped his arms around her automatically, eyes widening when he noticed Bennett and Jack grinning at him from the door.

“Guys! But I thought … weren’t you going to fly in tomorrow?”

“Surprise!” Gracie yelled again, her expression almost all Stiles when she grinned up at him cheekily.

Derek and Stiles had distributed their genes fairly evenly between their three children.

It wasn’t unusual for an Alpha to take after their Omega parent in looks and Jack was almost all Derek, save for his amber brown eyes and a couple of birthmarks sprinkled across his entire body.

Bennett was taller than his big brother and taller than both Stiles and Derek, which he’d gotten from the Alpha gene in Derek’s part of the family, but he mostly took after Stiles, though he had also inherited Derek’s eye color and hair-color.

Gracie had the same dark brown, almost black hair-color as her brothers did, her eyes as hazel-green as Bennett and Derek’s and her lips and nose a carbon copy of Stiles’. She was still tiny, however, barely 5 feet 3, which had been the exact height of Stiles’ long deceased mother.

Derek suspected the only reason the DMV had listed her height as 5’3 was because she’d cheated by wearing high heels, but he wasn’t going to bring it up because he didn’t want to hurt his daughter’s feelings.

“It’s okay that we came home a bit earlier, right? We didn’t mess up any plans or anything?” Bennett asked, stepping up to Derek to get a hug as well, and Derek kissed his Omega son’s forehead, hoping his smile was genuine.

“Of course it’s okay. This _is_ still your home and your daddy has missed you achingly. Don’t tell him I said that though, he’d probably deny it.”

Jack laughed, joining them as well and slinging an arm around Derek’s shoulder.

“Don’t worry Papa, that was the distinct expression we got when we stopped by the house earlier and he started screaming excitedly and almost threw over the coffee table in his haste to hug all three of us at once. Then he sent us here to help you pack up your classroom, so it seems like he hasn’t forgotten how to hand out chores yet.”

Jack chuckled, scratching at his full beard. His eyes turned serious once more when gave Derek a quick once-over, nostrils flaring ever so slightly.

“Dad said you haven’t been feeling so hot, lately? Are you doing better now?”

Derek smiled, genuinely this time.

As Alphas, both Jack and Gracie were hardwired to be protective of the Omegas around them, occasionally much to Bennett’s displeasure, but Jack had always been more protective of Derek than Gracie, sometimes even more so than Stiles.

He had no proof, obviously, but Derek had always thought Jack’s protectiveness of him stemmed both from the emotional stress he’d been under during the pregnancy and the three horrible days they’d been hauled up at the motel in 1998.

The former, because Derek had worried so much during his pregnancy that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Jack had picked up on those worry-wart tendencies in-utero. The latter, because his tiny Alpha son had eventually crawled into bed with him during that first night in the motel, patting his head helplessly as Derek had tried to muffle his choking sobs.

Derek had always hoped that Jack didn’t remember that time consciously, but it was clear to him that at least some part of him did.

“I’m fine Jack, don’t worry,” Derek said to his oldest, shaking his head fondly when Gracie pressed her head against his chest and listened to his heartbeat, as if she wanted proof.

“Well, we’re here now, so if you need us to take care of the Christmas preparations just say the word. We were going to get the Christmas ornaments from the attic earlier, but Dad said we’d have to pick out a tree, first. We were going to do that right now, actually. Do you want to join us? Dad said he’d come too. We could make it a family outing with hot chocolate, like we used to!”

Three hopeful faces were looking at him – or in Gracie’s case _up_ at him – and Derek could think of a million things he’d rather do than go pick out a Christmas tree and drink hot chocolate with his family.

For one, he hadn’t been prepared to extend the act of being fine to his children until tomorrow and he was still feeling a bit steamrolled by their unexpected arrival. Secondly, his belly was holding an unsteady truce at best and hot chocolate didn’t seem like the wisest nutritional choice for a tummy in serious hormonal upheaval.

The kids beamed at him, eyes shining in excitement, and Derek nodded, because he would have never been able to deny them such a beloved family tradition.

By this time next year, there’d be seven of them picking out a tree, but Derek wasn’t going to think about that now.

He simply wasn’t.

 

 

===============

 

 

_Two Days Till Christmas – Hale-Stilinski Residence, Living Room, 6:30 PM_

 

“Papa? Wake up Papa!”

Derek groaned, startling awake when Gracie shook his shoulder gently, feeling a bit disoriented for a second.

Gracie let go of him instantly, looking worried when she got a good look at his face.

“Oh! Sorry Papa, I didn’t know you were actually asleep, I thought you were just dozing.”

“Leave your father alone, he’s still getting over the stomach flu, which he would have done a lot sooner if he had, you know, actually listened to his wise mate and stayed home that first day!” Stiles called out from the kitchen, where he and Bennett were baking Christmas cookies.

Derek was a fairly decent cook but he’d never mastered baking and his oldest and youngest had inherited this inability from him.

Bennett, however, had spent hours upon hours in the bakery with Uncle Isaac as a child and Stiles shared his love for baking, which was why it had always been their very own little Christmas tradition.

“Sorry Papa,” Gracie repeated again, smiling fondly as she tugged up his blanket and tucked him in, as if he was the child.

“Don’t sleep away the entire day though, you’re going to be wide awake during the night,” Jack advised from the floor, where he’d been despairing over untangling the Christmas lights for the better part of an hour.

When he was sure both of his Alpha children were otherwise occupied, Derek smiled darkly.

He’d thrown up twice again last night, once at half past one and the second time just before five in the morning, so he was reasonably sure he was going to be wide awake during the night anyways.

He’d made it to the downstairs bathroom the first time but the second time he’d had to sprint to the master bathroom, hand pressed against his mouth as he’d turned on the shower to cover up the sounds of vomiting.

Then he’d actually taken a shower, feeling sweaty and gross anyways.

Stiles had looked at him like he was insane when he’d crawled back into bed around 5:30 AM, but at least he hadn’t noticed Derek’s nausea.

Three more days, Derek thought to himself, cupping his belly under the safety of the blanket.

Three more days and it would be December 26th, they would have gotten one last harmonious Christmas together, and Derek could think of a way to gently break the news to his mate and children.

Three more days.

He could do this.

 

================

_Christmas Eve, Hale-Stilinski Residence, Dining Room, 7:00 PM_

 

“Oh come on Daddy, just one sip! I’m almost nineteen, that’s older than Europeans are when they reach legal drinking age!”

Stiles shook his head, holding the wine bottle out of reach with a grin.

“Sorry Gracie-Boo, no underage drinking in this house. You know the rules.”

He turned towards Derek and clinked their glasses together, smiling that secret smile that said _Yes, I know I’m being a hypocrite, but I am still a Sheriff’s kid at heart._

“Cheers my love,” Stiles said gently, grasping Derek’s free hand with his own and gently stroking his knuckles as he raised the wine glass to his lips.

Derek mirrored him, taking a very tiny sip of his red wine and swirling it around in his mouth.

He waited until Stiles was occupied again and then spat it back into the wine glass as discreetly as he could, grateful that Gracie was now voicing her outrage over Bennett making use of his brand-new legal drinking age by savoring his wine with an over-exaggerated, dopey smile.

It was good wine, too, expensive, a dry red that Derek had always been very partial to, and it pained him physically that he was going to have to take the glass to the kitchen at some point soon to dump at least half of it in his pursuit to keep avoiding his family’s suspicion.

When he looked up from his glass he caught Jack turning his head away with a frown on his face and Derek froze for a second, terrified his son had noticed and drawn the right conclusions.

Jack didn’t say anything though, focusing on his siblings’ bickering instead, and Derek relaxed again, figuring he’d just been distracted by Bennett and Gracie’s discussion.

“Come on children, don’t fight,” Stiles said, raising his voice just slightly, and the children stopped bickering, though Bennett was still grinning smugly.

“How do you like the ham, Papa?” Gracie asked, eyes twinkling in excitement because she’d been put in charge of the ham for the first time since the almost-kitchen fire in 2014.

“It’s delicious Gracie,” Derek told her, taking another bite to prove it.

And it was, in fact, delicious, made even more so because his babies were obviously in the Christmas spirit and weren’t currently staging an uprising in his belly.

He had felt surprisingly good all day, actually. He hadn’t felt like throwing up once and had only felt a bit queasy between noon and one in the afternoon, though he’d managed to take his mind off it by helping his family prepare the traditional feast.

Derek had no illusions that he was actually going to be able to keep it all down longer than 1:30 AM at the latest, but for now he was determined to enjoy the peace while it lasted.

“I bet it would go even better with red wine,” Gracie mused, grinning, and Stiles groaned, holding out his glass to her.

“One sip Gracie-Boo, but only because it’s Christmas! Don’t tell Grandpa when he comes by tomorrow morning. And if you throw up tonight, that’s on you!”

Derek almost wanted to offer her his glass, then remembered that he’d just spat into it, and so he clinked glasses with his daughter instead, shaking his head when Gracie took a rather large sip.

“My children,” Stiles sighed dramatically, winking at his sons when both boys raised their voices in protest.

Derek chuckled, setting his glass back down, and the conversation soon turned to the children’s plans for the time between Christmas and New Years.

Gracie’s plans mostly revolved around hanging out at the mall with her friend’s for old times sake, Jack had made plans with his best friend to drive up to the lake for a day and get in some poker and bro-time, and Bennett had been tasked with hosting a baby-shower alongside two of his other friends, an activity he clearly wasn’t looking forward to.

“I’m just saying!” he said, taking another sip of his wine, “She’s got ten thousand friends, why did it have to be Brian, Dominica and I who had to organize this thing? Because we’re unmated Omegas, that’s why! She’s probably hoping to set us up with some Alpha at the shower just so she won’t be the only one breeding before finishing college!”

“You realize you and I in particular should be grateful that some people like to breed during college, right little brother?” Jack asked, raising his eyebrows, and Bennett swallowed his wine quickly, wincing apologetically.

“Right. Sorry Daddy, sorry Papa. I’m just saying though, if she tries to set me up with another Alpha-douchebag friend of hers I’m going to scream!”

“Oh I don’t know,” Gracie grinned, her cheeks just a little bit flushed and indicating to Derek that the sip she had taken from Stiles’ glass might have been a little too much after all.

“I bet you and the douchebag would make some really cute kids!”

Bennett snorted and Stiles let out a theatrical gasp, grabbing at his heart for dramatic effect.

“Don’t you even think about it Mister! You still have one year of college left and after that you’re going straight for your Master degree, young man! That goes for you two as well, by the way. Wrap up those knots, or else there’s going to be hell to pay!”

“Dad no, not _another_ safe sex lecture, _please_! Weren’t the five hundred you gave each of us during our four years of high school enough? Not to mention that infernal picture!” Jack groaned, looking at his Alpha father pleadingly.

Stiles puffed his chest out and looked proud, though Derek wasn’t exactly sure what for.

He knew very well what Jack was referring to and he, too, hated the picture with a passion.

It had been taken at Stiles’ prom night, largely because Derek hadn’t been quick enough to run away when the photographer had cornered them, and he and Stiles were in unanimous agreement had both of them had never looked more horrible.

Derek had just spent half an hour breathing through the pain of Braxton hicks and being not quite sure if he’d actually gone into labor a week before his due date and he’d been sweaty and red-faced, while Stiles had looked panicked and wide-eyed, hair mussed and his clothes askew.

It was, simply put, a horrible picture, with bad lighting to boot, and Stiles had printed a large version of it on glossy paper and snuck into the high school at the beginning of Jack’s Senior to tape it to the inside door of his locker, a constant reminder not to make the same mistake he had at that age.

Derek didn’t know what kind of adhesive Stiles had used, but Jack hadn’t been able to take the photo down, which was why the locker had been passed on to Bennett once Jack had graduated and then to Gracie, serving its horrific purpose for each of their children.

As far as Derek knew, the picture was still inside the locker, haunting the dreams of young hopeful Alphas and Omegas across town, but he hadn’t bothered to check which poor soul had inherited the locker from Gracie in September.

Stiles cleared his throat, giving the children a pleading look.

“Seriously though, please kids, don’t do this to me! Daddy is officially banning grandchildren until at least five years from now! If one of you had a baby now, Papa and I would have to move in with you guys to make sure that baby isn’t getting dropped on its head or starves because someone forgot to feed it and _nobody_ got time for that – don’t give me that look Missy, rest in peace your _three_ goldfishes before Papa put his foot down and banned you from having pets for life!”

He raised his eyebrows pointedly and Gracie shut her mouth immediately, looking contrite.

“The point is, Papa and I are going to be the best grandparents ever, obviously, but you have to give us _at least_ five years of a breather! We _just_ got all of you out of the house and I for one am planning to enjoy the heck out of this newfound freedom! Daddy needs at least five years of recuperating time before he’s ready for diaper changes again! Understood, kids?”

“Duh!” Bennett muttered, shaking his head, and Gracie beamed, declaring, “I’m _never_ having kids!”

“Papa? Papa, what’s wrong?”

Jack wasn’t looking at Stiles but at Derek, eyes wide with concern, his voice rising in alarm when he repeated the question.

Derek would have loved to answer him but he couldn’t, because his breath had disappeared at Stiles’ declaration and he had no idea where to.

“Derek? Derek!”

Breathing should _not_ be this hard, Derek thought, shaking and starting to feel lightheaded, and it wasn’t until Stiles pounded his fist onto his back that he gasped out, wheezing helplessly.

His belly was churning again, the nausea back with a vengeance, and he jumped up from the table and made a mad dash for the bathroom, dropping to his knees just in time to avoid making a mess on the floor.

“Papa?”

“ _Derek!_ ”

Derek appreciated that his family was so worried about him they were all currently trying to cram themselves into the tiny bathroom with him, but he was too busy emptying his stomach to acknowledge them properly.

“Shit, Derek!”

Stiles was pale when Derek finally pushed himself back up with shaking hands, taking one step forward and then swaying on his feet.

“Come on, sit down,” Stiles urged, arm securely wrapped around his waist as he guided him towards the couch and then lowered him on it, kneeling down in front of him and fixing him with worried eyes.

“What kind of weird-ass stomach flu is this that you’re fine one minute and sound like you’re dying the next? You haven’t acted like yourself for days now, this is clearly something else! Should we go to the emergency room? Shit, I already had two glasses of wine! Shit, we all did! Fuck! Grace, are you okay to drive?”

“No need for hospitals. I’ll be fine. I know what’s wrong,” Derek said, his voice hoarse as he leaned back and rested his head against the back of the couch.

He had to push his fists against his eyes to keep himself from crying, because this was _not_ how he’d wanted to do this.

“Derek? My love, you’re scaring me, what’s wrong?” Stiles asked, obviously trying to sound calm but voice shaking as he took both of Derek’s hands in his, eyes widening when he saw how wet Derek’s eyes were.

Derek swallowed heavily, feeling weighed down by the worried eyes of his family.

He had to tell his mate but he had no idea how to even begin, tugging his hands out of Stiles’ to once more rub them over his face in his agitation.

“Derek?” Stiles asked quietly and it had been a long time since Derek had seen him look so scared.

24 years and 4 months, in fact, in the tiny room at Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital in which Derek had labored for more than 18 hours to give birth to Jack.

It was strangely fitting, all things considered.

“Derek?” Stiles repeated again, voice barely above a whisper now, and judging from the look on his face he clearly thought Derek was going to reveal he was suffering from a terminal illness and had only days to live.

Derek was terrified of telling him the truth, but he couldn’t stand that look one second longer.

His hands dropped to his belly, cradling it and making the soft swell obvious.

“I’m sorry Stiles! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen! Hell, I didn’t think it _could_ happen, I didn’t … I didn’t pay attention. I should have been paying attention. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry!”

“ _Papa_! Holy shit, are you _serious_?” Jack breathed, nostrils flaring and eyes flashing red, staring at Derek’s belly with an expression that was part shock, concern, but also wonder, as if he couldn’t quite believe it yet.

Derek empathized with him greatly.

It had been days since he’d found out and he himself couldn’t quite yet believe it.

“Derek?”

Stiles’ eyes were going rapidly back and forth between Derek’s face and the gentle rounding of his belly, clearly not quite there yet, even though his nostrils had also started flaring, just a hint of Alpha red flashing in his eyes.

“I’m not ill, Stiles,” Derek said softly, fingers stroking gently across his belly as he closed his eyes.

“I’m just … pregnant. I’m just pregnant. 

“ _What_?”

Stiles’ tone was almost comically shocked and Derek smiled without humor, opening his eyes again to look at his stunned mate.

“That’s exactly what I said when I found out,” he said, his voice breaking as he lifted one hand to rub over his face again.

“Pregnant. Not ill. Just pregnant. You’re pregnant. There’s a baby in your belly right now. Because you’re pregnant. Pregnant. Holy shit, Derek, you’re really pregnant? Again? After all this time?”

Stiles’ eyes were so impossibly wide, his hands shaking when he pressed them against Derek’s belly, covering the Omega’s hand.

“Are you really sure? You’re really pregnant?” he asked again, looking up at him incredulously.

Derek nodded, letting out a shaky breath.

“Yeah. I’m sure. Scott figured it out and I went to see Doctor Yukimura right after. I’m pregnant. Eight weeks. Well. Almost nine now, I guess.”

“ _Derek_!” Stiles breathed, his fingers flexing against Derek’s stomach as he covered as much of it as he could.

“How long have you been keeping this to yourself?” Stiles asked, worry bleeding into his voice as one hand came up to cup Derek’s cheek.

Derek leaned into the touch, unable to resist.

“Four days. I think. I’m not sure. The past couple of days have been kind of a blur. I’m sorry Stiles. I wanted us to have one last nice Christmas together before … I was going to tell you after Christmas. I swear.”

“One last nice Christmas before … Derek? What are you saying? The apocalypse isn’t upon us just because … holy shit, that’s what you’ve been thinking, isn’t it? Holy shit, Derek Sebastian Hale-Stilinski, if I didn’t love you so much I would … holy shit!”

Stiles grabbed Derek’s face with both hands and shook him gently, glaring at him.

“Derek. Read my lips if you have to. I. Love. You. Always have, always will! How could you even think for one second that I’d be … what? Mad? Upset? Angry?”

He shook his head, taking a deep breath to calm himself. When he spoke again his voice was gentle, thumbs stroking Derek’s cheeks soothingly.

“Derek. My love. I wasn’t mad when we got pregnant with Jack _way_ ahead of schedule and I wasn’t mad when we goofed up again with Bennett. Why would I be mad now?”

“I … freedom! A childfree house for the first time in … ever! I didn’t … this wasn’t the _plan_ , Stiles!”

Stiles barked out a laugh, startling Derek. His mate’s eyes were still wide but his voice was steady when he spoke, sounding almost amused.

“Oh for heaven’s sake! Not a single one of our children was planned! That’s not how we roll, don’t you remember? Sure, Gracie wasn’t a _surprise_ , but was she really planned though? _Really_? We were ridiculously in love and had had a lot to drink and I said ‘let’s maybe have a third kid at some point’ and you said ‘why not’ and threw out those shots and I’m pretty sure you weren’t exactly sober either! Then wham, bam, two days later I knocked you up with Gracie while we were both pheromone-drunk off our asses! Planned? Ha! If planning requires sober people in full possession of their mental faculties then nope, she wasn’t exactly planned either! Sorry Grace.”

Stiles took a deep breath, hands once more dropping to Derek’s belly, cradling it gently.

“I love you, Derek, and our children are the best fucking thing to have ever happened to me. All three of them, planned or not planned. And I’ll love this new baby, too. I’m going to love it so damn fucking much!”

He shook his head, his eyes getting wet as well.

“Am I going to freak out at some point in the coming days? Sure, because you’re right, this wasn’t planned at all and I’ll probably have to go and return the motorcycle I ordered myself for Christmas yesterday and invest the money in getting a new nursery, because we sold everything after Gracie and the new stuff is probably far safer anyways! It’s for the best, really, I would have looked ridiculous on that bike and broken all of my bones within the first week, probably.”

Stiles shook his head again, biting his lip.

“Don’t get me wrong, Derek. Yes, this is a shock. Yes, this wasn’t planned. Yes, this is going to need some serious adjustment period. But we’ve done it before, haven’t we? We did it when we were two dumb, terrified kids with no money, no house, no degrees, and everyone telling us we’d fail, and we made it through and came out stronger for it! Now we have a house, secure jobs, money, and time! _So_ _much_ more time, because we’re neither pulling all-nighters to write papers while feeding an infant, nor are we juggling children, school, and below minimum-wage jobs! If we could do it then, we can do it now! Together. Because I love you. I love you so damn much!”

Derek could feel a heavy weight drop off of his shoulders when Stiles kissed him, just a peck on the lips due to the lingering smell of vomit, but enough to soothe an ache inside of him that had been festering for days.

“Merry Christmas everyone,” Gracie breathed, finally speaking and looking as shell-shocked as her brothers.

Bennett laughed, his expression full of disbelief, but Jack had gone quiet, looking increasingly troubled.

“Papa?” he asked, his voice shaking, and Derek looked at his oldest child, exhausted but relieved for the first time in days.

“Yes Jack?” he asked hoarsely and Jack gestured towards where Derek’s legs had fallen open, expression scared.

“Is it normal that you’re bleeding?”

Derek sucked in a sharp breath, looking down and staring at the dark spots on the seat of his light grey pants with wide eyes and his heart suddenly thundering all the way up his throat.

Then the room exploded into chaos.

 

 

=================

 

_Christmas Eve, Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, Ultrasound Room, 9:30 PM_

 

“I’m going to drink so much alcohol tonight! So fucking much!” Stiles declared, his voice hoarse with the leftover edges of his panic.

“At least _you_ aren’t going to lose your license because you sped like a crazy person,” Gracie said morosely, though she tightened the iron-clad hold she’d had on Derek’s right hand ever since he’d been admitted into the ER.

Stiles had been equally tightly attached to Derek’s left hand for the past hour and Bennett and Jack were hovering in the background, both of them looking like they’d run a marathon and then watched _Titanic_ five times in a row.

“Spotting is not at all uncommon at this stage in the pregnancy,” Doctor Yukimura repeated for the fifth time, her voice more soothing than Derek thought they deserved, given that she’d been paged away during her family’s Christmas Eve dinner as well.

“I’m sorry Kira,” Derek said, feeling boneless in his relief that had taken over him as soon as the sound of the babies’ heartbeats had come from the machine.

Kira chuckled, patting his leg.

“Not for that, Derek!” she said cheerfully, moving the ultrasound wand so that the image on the monitor changed, two little blobs becoming visible.

“Well then, Hale-Stilinskis, would you like to take a little closer look at your newest additions? It’s far too early to tell yet if they’re two little Alphas, Omegas, boys, girls, or both, of course, but it won’t be that much longer until you can find out!”

“Huh?”

“ _What_?”

“For real?”

“Holy shit! You go Daddy! And Papa! Holy shit though just … holy shit!”

“Uh … Derek? _My love_?”

“I was going to mention it, I swear,” Derek said, looking at Stiles apologetically when his mate fixed him with a dumbstruck expression.

“Sure, sure,” Stiles nodded, turning his head to stare at the screen once more.

He still looked completely shocked, steamrolled, even, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of his lips and his eyes … looked anything but unhappy.

“Best. Christmas. _Ever_!” Gracie declared, smiling from ear to ear.

“I mean, sans hospital and miscarriage scare, obviously! Could have done without the vomiting and all the crying, too. Apart from that though, best Christmas ever! I’m going to be the best big sister! You just wait! I’ll raise those kids to become upstanding citizens who’ll go vote in every election, who’ll go to protests and resist and get degrees in gender studies and become presidents and …”

“Hold your horses, Gracie-Boo, Daddy and I aren’t too shabby at raising kids either,” Derek said gently, squeezing her hand.

“Obviously!” Gracie said just a little too loudly, flicking her hair dramatically.

Derek flashed Jack a grateful smile when his oldest stepped up and wrapped his arms around his little sister, holding on to her quietly as she let out a shuddering breath, the fear, adrenaline, and Alpha hormones triggered by a pregnant Omega in distress clearly still pumping through her system.

“Are you sure you’re alright, Papa?” Bennett asked worriedly, eyes flickering back and forth between the ultrasound image and Derek’s face.

Derek looked at Kira and she nodded cheerfully, lifting the ultrasound wand and handing Derek a wet wipe to clean his belly.

“You’re fine, Derek. The babies’ heartbeats are really strong and they’re just the size they should be. I recommend you take it easy for a couple of days or so, to see if the spotting continues, but if it doesn’t, I’ll see you back for your next appointment in four weeks? I’m assuming?”

“Yeah. We can schedule that appointment,” Derek said quickly, not looking at Stiles when the Alpha gripped his hand tighter than ever.

“Wonderful!” Kira beamed, fixing Derek’s older children with a playful glare.

“Well then, kids, you guys just make sure your Papa takes it easy and gets to rest. Nothing better than being surrounded by your loved ones after a scare like this.”

“Already on it!” Jack reported, holding up his phone and revealing that he’d just ordered a tub of tummy butter on Amazon.

“Tag, Dad, you’re it!” he said cheerfully and Derek shook his head fondly, looking at Gracie and figuring that he might end up even larger than he’d been with her and that the tummy butter was going to be as useless as it had been 19 years ago.

Didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate the gesture though.

Stiles smiled as well but it was half-hearted at best. 

He stayed quiet as they left the hospital and remained mostly quiet once they got back home, helping the kids tidy the living room and the kitchen for a while before he joined Derek in the bedroom, where the pregnant Omega had already made himself comfortable under the blankets.

Stiles went and brushed his teeth and changed into his pajamas, then climbed into their bed, and Derek waited patiently, knowing what his Alpha wanted to ask.

“Did you consider it?”

Stiles’ voice was neutral, but he reached over to hold Derek’s hand, squeezing it tightly.

Derek relaxed, moving closer so he could rest his head on Stiles’ chest.

“That first day, yeah. I did. Not for very long though.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so. If it was an actual option for you, we would have never had Jack,” Stiles said softly, pressing a kiss to Derek’s hair.

“I’m glad I had a choice then and I’m glad I had a choice now. It’s just … this is my choice,” Derek said quietly and Stiles nodded, kissing his head again.

“Yeah. For the record, this is what I’m choosing, too. Not that I would have had an actual say in it, but … yeah … I love you. I want to do this with you. Again. God help me, but I do.”

Derek raised his head to look at him, holding his Alpha’s gaze as he contemplated his next words.

“You always had a choice. You didn’t have to do this with me,” Derek said at last.

“But I’m glad you are.”

“Duh,” Stiles said gently, pulling him into a full body hug.

Derek breathed him in, letting the Alpha pheromones soothe him.

Something was nagging in the back of his mind though. Something about the way Stiles had expressed himself earlier.

“Was it an option for _you_?”

“Huh? No. I mean, everything happened so fast tonight that I literally had no time to think about anything, but still … no. As I said, I’m still a little in shock, but raising children with you was one of the greatest things I’ve ever done in my life. Why would I _not_ want to do it again? I mean hey, we’re still young. Not as insanely young as we were, mind you, but I actually think it’ll be nice to enjoy this from the beginning _without_ anyone having to worry about things like money, careers, or your mother coming to chop my knot off while I’m sleeping.”

“She wouldn’t have done that. She had her reputation to consider. Also, that’s not what I meant,” Derek replied.

“What did you … oh. _Oh_.”

Stiles held his breath, his body tensing under Derek’s head.

Then he gently nudged Derek to roll off of him and turned on his side, waiting for Derek to do the same so they could look at each other, his face barely visible in the darkness of the room.

He reached out his hand and Derek clasped it with his own, their fingers intertwining, binding them together.

“I don’t think you ever asked me that,” Stiles said quietly, his eyes full of conflicting emotions.

Derek waited patiently, though a little lump formed in his throat when he realized what his Alpha was about to say.

Stiles took a deep breath, squeezing Derek’s fingers tightly.

“I love Jack with every part of my soul. He is my little buddy, my pride and joy, the reason I pushed myself to exhaustion during my Senior Year and all the way through college. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me – but I would have aborted him without a second thought if the choice had been mine on that day in the bathroom. And I look at him sometimes and I just … I feel a little guilty, I guess.”

“Stiles,” Derek whispered, pulling their hands towards his mouth so he could kiss his mate’s knuckles when he saw the Alpha’s wet eyes, trying to offer comfort.

Stiles smiled shakily, thumb sneaking out to caress Derek’s chin.

“You’re probably wondering why I never told you. The truth is, I was too terrified at first and then I quickly realized that it wouldn’t have mattered anyways.”

He shrugged, smiling grimly.

“The moment that stick turned positive the only thoughts in my head were things like ‘I don’t want this’, ‘This isn’t my life’ and ‘Make it go away’. If we’d had smartphones back then, I probably would have googled abortion providers and prices right there on the spot. I see these videos on Youtube sometimes, where Alphas learn that their Omega is expecting their first child and I keep thinking “Ha, that’s staged!” because my moment was so horrible that I can’t even imagine anyone being excited in that situation. You were sitting on the edge of that tub and you were crying and you just wouldn’t stop touching your belly. It made me want to scream because that made it real. Much more real than the stick, mind you.”

Stiles exhaled noisily, shaking his head.

“That doesn’t mean I was angry though, I was serious about that earlier. I knew it was _our_ mess, not yours, and being angry with you was the last thing on my mind. If anything, I was terrified for you, because I couldn’t even imagine you _not_ wanting the abortion, despite all that belly touching. You had just started your Sophomore Year at college, you had a life, you were going to go to law school. Having a baby would wreck everything and I couldn’t imagine for one second that you’d choose a baby over all that. I didn’t want you to have to go through an abortion, but I wanted to not be an underage father even less. I was sitting there trying to figure out how to even begin to explain all of that when things took a turn for the worse.”

“The test in the trashcan,” Derek said, grimacing in remembrance.

Stiles nodded.

“Yeah. It occurred to me that maybe this was a false positive and I think I pretty much begged you to tell me that was a possibility, but you shook your head and said this was the fifth or sixth test you had taken in the past 24 hours and you didn’t think it was. In fact, you’d taken one just before you’d driven over to my place, back at your parent’s house. I wanted to see it, so I asked you to show me. Which was when you turned white as a sheet because you suddenly realized you’d just chucked it into the trashcan in the master bathroom at your house earlier, without even wrapping it up in toilet paper or something.”

He laughed, though his expression was grim.

“So we hightailed it out of that bathroom and raced over to your house to hide the evidence. And then I put a dent into your mom’s Camaro because she pulled into the driveway only seconds before me. Fun times.”

Derek winced, remembering it clearly.

“I prayed to every deity I’d ever heard of that she didn’t already know, but one look at her face and that hope was dashed instantly.”

Stiles shuddered.

“Well, _you_ didn’t have all that much to worry about, you were her one and only prized Omega child after all. I on the other hand said goodbye to my knot right there in that driveway, because I thought I’d get to leave without it. She was so, _so_ angry.”

Derek winced again, the memory carrying a dull hurt even after so many years.

Derek’s father had become a stay-at-home Omega after Cora’s birth and he’d been out for a run when Derek had taken the pregnancy test and then rushed over to Stiles’ place. When he’d gotten home and went upstairs to take a shower, he’d noticed that the trashcan lid had been hanging off and had opened it, seeing the test immediately.

Having had three babies himself, Derek’s father hadn’t needed an instruction manual to figure out what the pink plus meant and whose test it had been.

Derek thought that things might have turned out a little differently if they’d had different technology then.

If he’d had a cellphone, his father might have called him first instead of freaking out and calling Derek’s mother in her office in a panic, disrupting a very important meeting about donations that had taken her months to set up.

The potential donors, a rather conservative group, had heard everything as Derek’s father had yelled about positive pregnancy tests in the trash and unwed Omega sons over the speaker phone, cutting Talia’s meeting short and destroying her chance at securing the donation.

She’d worked for the opportunity for months and kissed a lot of asses, an activity she’d always hated, and sometimes Derek also thought that things would have been different if she’d been relaxed and happy when she’d gotten the news.

She hadn’t been, though.

She’d been stressed, disappointed, and upset, and one look at Stiles and Derek’s faces had been enough for her to realize that Derek was, indeed, pregnant and unmated while still in college … all of that at the age of 19, with a baby-daddy who hadn’t even graduated from high school yet and wasn’t even legal to vote.

The situation had escalated quickly from there.

She’d never spoken to Derek like she had that day, not before and not since, and he’d taken the yelling and screaming without making a sound, right until the moment she’d yelled “This is a fucking mistake and you need to abort it before it’s too late!”

“The look on your face. That terrible look on your face,” Stiles said softly, voice brimming with emotion.

“I like to think I only truly became a dad the moment they pulled Jack out of you and then placed him in my arms for the first time. You were months ahead of me, though. You became his father in that moment in your parents’ living room. You were so pale, at first I thought you were going to faint on me, but then I realized that you where shaking because you were furious. You were also shielding your belly with both hands. Do you remember that?”

Derek shook his head and Stiles smiled softly, untangling their hands so he could reach down and lightly stroke his fingers up and down the gentle curve of Derek’s abdomen.

“I do. I remember thinking that it was as if some part of you thought your mother was already wielding the coat hanger right in front of you. Then you took my hand and we got the hell out of there and I knew in that moment that an abortion was off the table. So I didn’t really see a need to bring it up after that.”

“Did you still want me to have one though? After?”

Stiles chuckle humorlessly.

“Heck yeah! I’m pretty sure I spent the rest of your first trimester praying you’d change your mind. Well … that makes it sound too long, I mean, you were what, ten, almost eleven weeks pregnant already when you could finally bring yourself to admit that that was what was happening? So it was really only about a week … maybe two, tops. But I was very aware of where the next clinic was and I knew the exact state of my college fund to the last cent, yes. Though I figured that if anyone had to pay for it, your mother would probably run me over for the opportunity and chop off my knot while she was at it.”

“You have an unhealthy fascination with the women in my family chopping off your knot,” Derek mused and Stiles laughed, eyes twinkling.

“Hey, Laura did _accidentally_ drop a knife on my lap once when Jack was four months old and claimed she’d stumbled! You can’t tell me that wasn’t an attempt at ridding me of my Alphahood. I bet you it was!”

“Given that it was the bluntest knife in the entire kitchen, I’d probably take that bet.”

Stiles laughed and he pulled Derek closer, until their noses were almost touching and Derek’s belly was just barely brushing against Stiles’ body.

“It was weird though. I wanted you to have an abortion so badly until suddenly I didn’t anymore. I mean, what kind of helped me was that you’d made the choice already. I’ve always been better at adapting and reacting to situations I can’t change than being part of the life-changing decision process, so having something solid to focus all my nerves and energy on instead of my mind eating itself going back and forth on the possibilities was quite helpful. That didn’t mean I went from wanting you to abort to picking out baby-names though. It was more … how should I put this … a prolonged state of numbness, maybe?”

“I … I had no idea you felt that way back then.”

“Yeah well, you did finish that fall semester at college and only saw me every other weekend, it was kind of easy to hide from you. It actually took me until the week of Thanksgiving to have a positive emotion about the pregnancy though. Two days before Thanksgiving, in fact. When you called me to tell me that you’d felt him kick for the first time.”

He smiled and Derek smiled back, kissing Stiles’ nose fondly.

They hadn’t known he had been a he, back then, of course, because Jack had stubbornly kept his little legs closed until Derek had been 32 weeks pregnant, but Derek hadn’t been nearly as emotional about finding out they were expecting a little Alpha boy as he had been about feeling those first kicks.

He’d been nineteen weeks along and hadn’t been expecting it at all, since the book he’d read had mentioned that most first time expectant Omegas felt their babies kick between weeks 21 and 23.

Derek had been sitting in class, hiding in one of the mostly empty back rows because he’d been avoiding people for weeks now, not ready to talk about the pregnancy and afraid that someone would notice what was going on.

He’d already known then that he was going to sit out the spring semester and although he had also known it was the most sensible choice, given that his due date was literally during finals week, he’d still felt ashamed.

Hiding it had been surprisingly easy. He hadn’t really started showing until he’d been about twenty-five weeks along with his first pregnancy and so he’d managed to get by wearing sweaters, as long as they were big enough to fall over the waistband of his jeans.

Derek wasn’t vain per se, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to buy bigger pants for the longest time, even after he had no longer been able to close his jeans when his belly had rounded out just enough to make buttoning his pants impossible, firm and unyielding as it has been.

He’d managed by using rubber bands until finals, though, and he was still quite proud that no one had found out until the very end.

On that day in class, Derek had been sitting in the back of the lecture hall, trying very hard to concentrate on the lecture but not quite managing. He’d been staring at a spot on the ceiling when he’d felt it – the strangest sensation, almost if someone was popping bubbles inside his belly. Derek had concentrated then, a hand sneaking under his sweater and resting against the soft curve, and when it had happened again he’d gasped, attracting some confused stares.

Derek had called it a day, then, because concentration was no longer an option whatsoever, and he’d gotten back to his dorm room as quickly as he could, stripped out of his clothes, turned off the lights, and laid flat on his back, because he’d read that it would be easier to feel the baby move in the beginning if he just held very still.

It had taken a while but then Jack had moved again, which was when he’d called Stiles, voice brimming with emotion.

“You sounded so happy. For the first time since that day in my bathroom you actually sounded happy and it made me feel … I can’t really explain it. It was like the part of my brain that is entirely dominated by my Alphahood lit up like a Christmas tree or something, because knowing that you were so stressed and unhappy really did a number on me back then. And I was just so relieved to hear you being happy that I guess I was happy about the source of that happiness by extension?”

Stiles shrugged, his eyes glinting fondly.

“Of course then I spent the next two days counting down the hours until you pulled up in our driveway with that horrible store-bought pumpkin pie, because I imagined feeling the baby move and seeing you smile because of it. Joke was on me of course, because it was way too early for me to feel it from the outside and that didn’t actually happen until you came home after finals, but still … seeing you happy made it possible for me to feel something other than sheer terror about the entire situation for a change.”

“You felt a bunch of other things, too, if I recall. Later that night. Also for the first time since that day in the bathroom,” Derek smiled and Stiles winced, hiding his face in Derek’s neck with a groan.

“I did. Taking you from behind while holding on to your belly really did it for me, I’m not going to lie. _Hello_ posturing Alpha hormones, is all I’m saying. Worst morning-after ever though! Damn the paper-thin walls of my bedroom!”

Derek laughed. It hadn’t been funny at the time but it had definitely been long enough for him to be able to see the humor in the situation that had been Sheriff Stilinski polishing his guns during breakfast the next day while giving them a play-by-play of every utterance of bliss Stiles had let out the night before with the expression of a man getting all of his teeth pulled at once.

“I understand pregnant Omegas have needs. I remember Stiles’ mother’s pregnancy well, which is why I’m not even going to try and forbid it. No one could have kept me from making sure my pregnant Omega was taken care of during that time and I’m not going to make this difficult for you two … besides, it’s not like my son can get you anymore pregnant than you already are, _that_ train has left the station! What I need you two to understand though is that _father’s_ also have needs. Mainly, the need to never again hear the kind of things I heard last night. Are we clear on that?”

Stiles had been bright red, the Sheriff hadn’t looked any happier, and Derek had seriously contemplated moving to Europe.

Derek smiled at the memory, wiggling down a little so he could once more rest his head on his Alpha’s chest.

“You know that you have nothing to feel guilty for, right?” he asked after a long pause, placing his palm flat on Stiles’ chest.

Stiles sighed, placing his own hand over Derek’s.

“Most days I do. Most teenage Alphas in that situation would have thought about the possibility. And it’s not like I would have taken it lightly, if you’d actually been open to the idea. It was easy to wish for it because I knew there was no way it was happening, but if you’d actually agreed and I would have had to seriously think about all the consequences … whew! I guess I should be glad I never really had to, to be honest. I don’t care what the right-wingers say, it’s a fucking hard decision to make, no matter the circumstances.”

Derek nodded into his Alpha’s chest, inhaling deeply.

“You know … if anything, I should be the one feeling guilty here,” he muttered, almost to himself.

“Huh? What for, exactly?” Stiles asked incredulously.

Derek sighed, internally debating whether or not he really wanted to voice the thoughts that had been circling inside his head.

Then again, Stiles had just opened up to him about something that had obviously been plaguing him for a long time and Derek wanted to give that trust back.

“What if … what if I did it on purpose?”

“On purpose? What are you talking about?”

Stiles tapped Derek’s shoulder and then pushed up his torso, indicating that the wanted them to sit up.

His expression was confused, eyes searching Derek’s intently.

Derek bit his lip and pulled his knees up, needing to wrap his arms around something.

“I’m not saying I did it consciously. But maybe a part of me _did_ realize that I was going through a mini-heat and maybe … maybe I was scared that you’d … it’s stupid. Forget I said anything.”

Stiles’ eyes had narrowed and his eyebrows had climbed to his hairline, making it clear that forgetting about it was the last thing on his mind.

“Scared? Scared of what?”

Derek opened and closed his mouth, suddenly feeling guilty for even considering it, and after a moment of silence Stiles took pity on him, though he looked a bit frustrated.

“You thought I was going to leave you? Didn’t you? You actually thought that now that the kids are out of the house I’d go through some sort of Alpha midlife crisis and pack up my stuff and just leave you?”

“You _did_ buy a motorcycle, apparently,” Derek said, trying for light and missing by a mile, and Stiles let out a scoff, looking a bit contrite.

“Yes. Yes in fact, I did. So maybe there _was_ some kind of early-stage midlife crisis happening because it turns out that apparently the house was a bit too empty for me and my strapping provider urges and I was actually missing the kids more than I thought I would. Not the point right now though. Let’s get back to where you thought I’d ever leave the love of my life. Let’s talk about _that_!”

Stiles sounded genuinely offended and it was giving Derek complicated feelings, love and relief mixed with ever-increasing guilt.

His last couple of days in a nutshell, essentially.

“I love you,” he said, grasping Stiles’ hand and smiling when the Alpha gripped back tightly.

“I love you so much and I’m so glad that you went on this crazy journey with me. But I didn’t really give you a choice, back then. On the night I got pregnant we hadn’t even been dating for two full months, and by the time we found out we’d been together for four months. After that our focus shifted to the kids and family stuff and you never even got to … I had a conversation with Cora about this once, you know. When she came to see me and Jack in the hospital after the birth.”

Stiles’ expression hardened.

“Are you finally going to tell me what she said to you that day? I never did believe you that your mood after that visit was just a case of the baby-blues, you know that, right?”

Derek exhaled heavily, not eager to revisit that painful memory but knowing it was necessary.

Growing up, Derek and his two sisters had been as close as siblings could be, but puberty had altered their dynamic in a way that had created a distance between them.

Derek’s family wasn’t ultra-conservative, but Beacon Hills was a fairly traditional community, more moderate than most but definitely conservative regarding certain aspects.

Derek’s mother had been the city’s mayor for thirty years before she’d retired five years ago and she had applied the same moderately traditional platform she’d run on to raising her three children.

Talia Hale had supported gender equality in the workforce, but at home she’d definitely been the Alpha, financial provider and ultimate decision maker. Derek’s father had never wanted for anything and she’d worshipped the ground he’d walked on, especially after he’d made the decision to become a stay-at-home Omega.

As the only Omega child, Derek had been doted on when he’d been little, but after he’d gone through puberty his family had turned all of that doting into almost stifling protectiveness.

Laura and Cora had picked up on it instinctively and Derek had turned from the brother they included in everything into a porcelain prince they had to guard with their life.

He knew now that it had come from a place of – albeit misguided – love, but back then it had just made him want to get away from them as often as possible.

Getting pregnant at nineteen and while unmated hadn’t been an act of rebellion.

It hadn’t been.

Derek was sure of it.

Ninety-nine percent sure, at least.

It hadn’t been a rebellion, but it hadn’t helped the strained relationship he’d had with his family at that point in his life, and Cora’s visit to the hospital had created a rift between the two of them that was still not quite mended.

Patched up just enough to get through family gatherings, yes.

But mended enough so that they actually sought each other’s company outside family Christmases, Thanksgivings and birthdays? No.

“She’d come straight from the after graduation ceremony party your class had. I think she was maybe even a little bit drunk still. Maybe things would have turned out differently if she hadn’t been, but maybe she would have said the exact same things to me, it doesn’t really matter now. All I know is that she waited for you to go get a coffee, then sneered at our beautiful baby and congratulated me on trapping you for life.”

“She _what_?”

Derek held up a hand to stop Stiles’ angry protest.

“I get where she was coming from, in a way. You guys were in the same year and I think she was imagining how she would feel in your position. She’d gotten her carefree Senior Year, she’d gotten to walk across the stage at graduation, she was going to pack up and move to college in three months, and she was already making all these plans of what she’d do once she go there. She knew you weren’t going to get any of it and I think that made it weirdly personal for her.”

“Bull-shit!” Stiles said, enunciating the word carefully.

“Your sisters hate me! Well … Laura stopped hating me eventually and started to grudgingly respect me when I made detective and she realized I was in fact going to be able to send those three kids through college. Cora though … Cora still holds a grudge against me for making her go through Senior year as ‘Cora Hale, girl with the unmated knocked up brother’. She didn’t give a rat’s ass about my feelings! I can guarantee you that one hundred percent. If she had, she would have, you know, asked me how I was feeling at least _once_ during those eight months in which we sat in two classes together and she kept looking at me like I was a mass murderer or something! She didn’t care about me at all, she just wanted to hurt you. Probably because she knew you were feeling guilty already.”

He shook his head angrily, tightening his hold on Derek’s hand.

“For the record, you didn’t trap me. If I’d wanted to leave back then I could have. I had a car, it was literally that easy. I didn’t though, not because out of obligation but because I love you, you Doofus! End of story.”

Stiles snorted, a little unkindly.

“What does Cora know about love anyways? She’s had what, forty-five relationships in the past twenty-five years? I lost count. Not to mention that eight-year old somewhere up in Seattle we’re all not supposed to mention but that we’re all expected to send letters filled with cash on her birthday because she’s family, even though none of us have ever met her? If you ask me, the only person trapped in a life she never wanted is your sister. Not I.”

He pulled Derek closer so that the Omega was nestled into the crook of his arm. His other hand came to rest on Derek’s belly, stroking it gently.

“Besides, if being trapped means that I got a mate I love with all my heart, three amazing children who make me proud every single day and now two other beautiful children that I get to see grow up into wonderful little people then by all means, please keep trapping me for the rest of my life. With handcuffs, if you have to. Well … maybe not handcuffs, that didn’t go so well last time.”

"It did not,” Derek agreed, turning to kiss his Alpha’s cheek.

“And another thing, since we’re talking about _purpose_ … you realize that I am the Alpha here, right? Alphas are supposed to smell an Omega’s heat from five miles away, so if anyone did anything on purpose here, it was definitely I! Maybe _I_ was the one who subconsciously knew you were going through a mini-heat and we were having lots of unprotected sex while you were fertile. Maybe _I_ was the one who was scared that _you_ ’d end up leaving me eventually, now that the kids are out of the house and it was so quiet all the time. Maybe _I_ was always insecure about you having had experiences that I didn’t and maybe you regretted being shackled to the worst of the lot? So who knows, maybe my Alpha wanted to knock you up again so you’d stay with me just a little while longer! You got me! That was my master plan! And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids!”

Derek let out a disbelieving sound, turning to look at his mate incredulously.

Stiles chuckled.

“See how idiotic that sounds when you say it out loud? For the record, I am not insecure in your love for me at all and I’m pretty sure the romance is still very much alive. I see the way you look at my knot. Also …”

He patted Derek’s belly, smiling cheekily.

“Kind of hard to argue the romance is dead when the evidence is right here.”

Stiles paused, sucking in a sharp breath and his eyes suddenly wide.

“Wow! I’m still not used to it yet. We’ve been talking about it for literally an hour but I just realized it again. There are two babies in there right now! Two actual babies! That’s … _wow_!”

Derek smiled, feeling lighter and happier than he had ever since he’d looked at the positive pregnancy test in Scott’s office.

“That’s okay. I’m not used to it yet either.”

Stiles grinned.

“At least we’re finally on the same page here. So, _Papa_ , what do you say we try to get some sleep so the little ones can keep growing and whatever else you do when you’re a nine week old blob inside a cushy, warm, little apartment. Want to spoon? I think I want to spoon.”

"You just want to get your hands all over me, isn’t it?” Derek asked, though he lay down immediately, enjoying the feeling of his Alpha’s warmth against his back.

Stiles huffed playfully, his arm winding around Derek’s waist and pulling him even closer, hand resting on his belly possessively.

“I _always_ want to get my hands all over you! That’s kind of the entire reason we’re in this situation. It’s going to be so good though. I mean … we’re just _so much better_ at sex than when you were all hopped up on pregnancy sex hormones last! It’s going to be so fucking good, you just wait!”

“I’m glad you can see the silver lining in all of this,” Derek teased and Stiles’ hand stilled on his belly momentarily.

When he started caressing it again, his voice was utterly fond.

“Silly man. There _is_ no silver lining – because there aren’t any clouds.”

 

 

===================

 

_First Week of April – Spring Break – Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital_

“I’m so excited! I mean sure, most people would argue that an Alpha who’s so excited about other people’s babies is a slicker, but you know what? If getting excited about my baby-sisters is wrong then I don’t want to be right!”

“Language, what are the babies going to think! Besides, they better be little brothers, because there’s a risk that they might end up just like you and one loud-mouth in the family is definitely enough!”

“I resent the implication!” Gracie declared royally, waiting a split of a second before she wrapped her arms around Bennett and started tickling him.

“I’m a delight, admit it, admit it!” she exclaimed and Bennett let out a wheezing laugh, trying to defend himself against his tiny but strong Alpha sister and grinning from ear to ear.

“ _Children_ ,” Jack said emphatically, looking like he was above everything even though his eyes were twinkling with barely controlled laughter.

“Ahem … if you would like to direct your attention back at the screen so we can actually figure out who’s right?” Kira asked, clearing her throat, and Bennett and Gracie stopped their tickle-fight instantly, both blushing.

Derek smiled at her apologetically but Kira was beaming from ear to ear, clearly swept up in all the excitement in the room.

She had offered to tell Derek and Stiles the genders and sexes of their babies when he’d been 18 weeks along but they had decided to wait until their two younger children were home for spring break and Jack could take off work, wanting to share that moment with all three of them.

Kira had done a lot of testing on him to rule out all the potential risks associated with pregnancies at his age, and Derek knew there was a page inside his folder right now that not only confirmed his babies were healthy and thriving but also confirmed their sexes and genders without a shadow of a doubt.

He could have taken a look at the folder easily, but both he and Stiles had wanted to find out while seeing the children on the ultrasound.

“They look so much bigger than last time! They actually look like babies now!”

Gracie was staring at the screen in rapt fascination and Kira chuckled, moving the transducer over Derek’s belly to get another closer look at Baby A’s organs.

"Well, they’re 23 weeks old now and the last time you saw them they were nine weeks old, that’s a big difference.”

“It feels like it, too,” Derek said, rolling his eyes when Stiles mouthed, “Damn right it does!” under his breath.

“When’s their due date again?” Gracie asked and Kira glanced at the folder briefly.

“In theory they should get here around August 1st, but you should expect them to come earlier. Depending on how big they are we might actually have to induce them earlier, if Derek doesn’t go into labor on his own. I don’t think it’ll come to that though.”

“Awesome!” Gracie declared, pulling out her phone and looking at her calendar.

“The new semester doesn’t start until August 8, that means I’ll definitely be here for the birth! Actually, I’ll be here for almost the entire third trimester, so I can totally take care of Papa! I can’t wait!”

“Alpha-hen him to death, is what she means by that,” Bennett said conversationally, grinning when Gracie lightly elbowed his side in mock-protest.

“Sorry baby-girl,” Stiles said cheekily, raising his eyebrow at his daughter.

“Daddy’s already got the Alpha-henning and care-taking covered. _You_ are going to get a summer-job!”

Gracie pouted, looking almost exactly like she had when she’d been 13 and lost her television privileges for a week because she’d failed math.

“Can I at least get a summer-job in Beacon Hills? I don’t want to be stuck in New York City while all the fun is happening here!”

“What kind of _fun_ are you foreseeing in my immediate future, daughter dearest?” Derek asked her, gesturing at his belly with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m still at a higher risk for bed-rest and quite frankly, if these two keep growing like they have been that might actually be the better option for everyone. I’m going to be sitting on the bed watching Netflix and crying over animal documentaries or running to the bathroom to pee all summer, most likely. If you want to watch that, sure, but I think you’ll get bored quickly.”

“ _Please_ ,” Gracie begged, giving him her best puppy-dog eyes expression that she had clearly learned from Scott, and Derek looked at Stiles, winking.

“What do you say my love?” he asked and Stiles groaned playfully.

“Alright, alright. I _guess_ she can have her old bedroom back and watch Netflix with you in the evenings when she gets back from her totally awesome _summer job_! Bennett, too, let’s just make it a party.”

“My own apartment and I are feeling so left out right now,” Jack snorted, grunting when Gracie wrapped her arms around him theatrically.

“We’ll send you all the updates while you’re at work! Urination frequency, mucus plug, everything! It’ll be like you’re living it!”

“Someone steal her copy of _What To Expect When You’re Expecting!_ Please? I don’t think I can stand hearing anymore gross pregnancy facts than I already know about!” Bennett groaned and Kira laughed, tapping her finger against the screen meaningfully.

“Their genders and sexes?” she reminded them, raising her eyebrow meaningfully when all five Hale-Stilinskis snapped to attention.

Kira moved the transducer again, looking for the right angle.

Then she leaned back, fixing Derek and Stiles’ children with an amused expression.

“Any last minute guesses?”

Gracie didn’t even look at the screen, smiling smugly.

“Two Alpha sisters! I checked out Google Images and Papa’s belly looks exactly like that’s what’s happening.”

Bennett rolled his eyes, making a show of actually looking at the screen.

“The one on the left obviously has a penis! Omega, I think. The one on the right is definitely an Alpha though. Another boy, I’m pretty sure.”

Jack clucked his tongue, squinting at the screen.

“You’re both blind! They’re both Omega boys, obviously!”

Kira raised her eyebrows, unimpressed.

“Are any of you going into the field of OBGYN by chance?”

When all three kids shook their heads she grinned, looking almost devious.

“Good! Because you’re all wrong! Want to give it a shot as well, Stiles? Derek?”

Stiles puffed out his chest, grinning smugly.

“Let the master show you how it’s done, children! It’s obvious, by the way, how could you even miss it! The one here on the left is clearly an Alpha girl and the one on the right is a beautiful little Omega boy!”

He turned towards Derek with a blinding smile and Derek smiled back, imagining a little version of Gracie and a little version of Bennett running around the house.

Kira chuckled, sounding a little apologetic.

“I hate to say it Stiles, but the master is definitely more of an apprentice. You got their sexes right though, I’ll give you that. Hale-Stilinskis, meet your two new additions properly. On the left we have a little Alpha boy and the little one on the right here is an Omega girl!”

“Awesome!” Gracie yelled, squeezing Jack so hard he started wheezing.

“I love you! So much!” Stiles whispered to Derek, his eyes wet when he bent down to kiss him.

Derek smiled against his lips, thoroughly reciprocating the sentiment.

 

 

===============

 

_July 14 th – Beacon Hills Memorial – Birthing Ward_

Derek figured that most people who were pregnant with twins were probably nervous about attempting a natural birth.

Derek also figured that hardly anything could be more nerve-wrecking than giving birth to a baby at 19, with no real prospects to support said baby and a barely 18-year old holding on to one’s hand in terror so tightly it felt like he was bruising it.

Therefore, he was relatively relaxed now in comparison, even six hours into some pretty strong contractions, the intensity of which he had definitely forgotten.

Stiles pressed a wet cloth against his forehead, wiping away the sweat, and Derek shared a look with his Alpha, noticing in amusement that, compared to their children, Stiles also looked like a Zen-master.

An unshaved Zen-master with his shirt on inside out, because he’d been in the shower when Derek had gone into labor and had gotten dressed rather hastily, but still, his calm was soothing and steadying, a world of difference to the way he’d looked during the first birth.

Bennett and Gracie, meanwhile, had turned into nervous-wrecks the moment Derek had called down from the bedroom to inform them that his water had broken, following that information up with the thought that it was actually quite fitting, since he was currently playing beached whale on a bed.

They’d rushed him to the hospital and Jack had arrived an hour before Kira had declared Derek ready to push, still dressed in his work-clothes and looking terrified and utterly excited.

He’d been firing off paranoid questions at Kira since he’d gotten there, however, and Derek would have barked out laughter at most of them, had he not been busy breathing through the pain of yet another contraction.

“That’s it Derek, easy, easy, you’re almost there, I can already see the head! You’re doing so good, it’s like you’ve been doing this for the past twenty years!”

“No thank you!” Derek gasped out, chuckling despite the pain when he fell back against the bed, panting.

“Never again! You hear me? I mean it this time!” he told Stiles once he’d gotten his breath back.

Stiles huffed out a laugh, gesturing at his crotch with a raised eyebrow.

“I got snipped back in January, remember? Unless that doctor really didn’t know what he was doing, no more oopsie-babies for us!”

“Good!” Derek panted, squeezing his eyes shut when the urge to push became stronger once more.

The pain turned almost unbearable then, the pressure burning and all-consuming.

Then it was suddenly over and when he opened his eyes again all he could do was stare at his baby, red and wrinkly and perfect, tinier than he would have thought but with lungs strong enough to make up for it.

“Congratulations, Papa, meet your new son!” Kira smiled gently, placing him on Derek’s chest and putting a blanket over him to keep him warm.

“Hello Finn,” Derek said softly, his voice hoarse and full of emotion.

Stiles kissed his forehead, large hand cupping the baby’s head, covered with a shock of hair just as dark as his older siblings’.

“He’s gorgeous, Derek!” Stiles whispered, his eyes drinking in their little Alpha boy.

“Oh my god,” Gracie whispered, her voice choked, and when Derek looked up there were tears in his daughter’s eyes.

His older sons wore similar expressions of excitement and Derek nodded at them to come closer, adjusting the baby in his arms so they could get a good look.

“He looks like someone took Gracie and Bennett and put them in a mixer,” Jack laughed, stroking the baby’s legs with the tip of his finger and smiling widely.

“He does, doesn’t he?” Stiles said in wonder, wrapping his arms around his daughter when she muffled a little sob behind her hand.

“Congrats, big sister, you’re no longer the baby in the family!” he whispered into her hair, and Gracie just held on tighter, smiling so brightly that Derek almost didn’t notice the pain once more coursing through his body, his belly tightening with yet another contraction.

“Guys, can you take your brother?” he gritted out, looking at Jack, and Jack nodded quickly, his arms steady when he lifted Finn out of Derek’s hold, cradling him against his chest.

“Still got it, big Bro!” Bennett grinned when Finn stopped mewling almost immediately. He wrapped an arm around Jack’s shoulder, leaning in so he could slip his index finger into Finn’s little hand.

Feeling secure that his baby-boy was safe with his brothers, Derek allowed himself to focus on his new baby-girl completely, relief coursing through him when he could feel her head breach the birth canal.

Kira had warned them that the second twin sometimes ended up being born by c-section, but it looked like his second daughter was going to make this easy for him.

Stiles was holding his hand, whispering praises and encouragements over and over, and Gracie had moved to his other side, holding his other hand and eyes shining with excitement.

Eve entered the world exactly ten minutes after her twin-brother, screaming just as indignantly after Kira had cleared her little nose and mouth.

She was a little bigger than Finn and when Derek held his Omega daughter in his arms the first thing he noticed was that she was almost a carbon-copy of Jack, except for the fact that her head was full of little curls the exact same color as Stiles’ hair.

“I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you!” Stiles repeated over and over, and Derek was almost one hundred percent sure that he wasn’t just saying it to him but all of them.

To Jack, their thoroughly unexpected first-born, whose conception had caused so much misery, pain, and fear, and had ended up bringing them so much joy and happiness.

To Bennett, their unplanned second-born, whose sunny disposition had helped carry his parents through the darkest days of their relationship and who made them proud everyday.

To Gracie, their technically planned third-born, who had been their baby for so long that she would always be, in a way, even though she was headed towards a promising career with large steps.

To Finn and Eve, who were beautiful, healthy, and perfect, who had been their biggest surprises yet, changed all of their plans … and whom Derek already loved with everything he had.

Their house wouldn’t be empty.

Instead, it would be filled with joy, laughter, and excitement for another 18-year long adventure, an altogether unexpected journey.

Derek couldn’t have asked for a better companion and he couldn’t wait to take the first step.

 

The End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Thank you so much for reading!
> 
>  
> 
> Edited March 7th, 2018: I have added a second chapter that is not an actual second chapter as part of the narrative but instead a collection of extra Headcanons for this AU, including the POV for multiple characters in here whose dealings with the teen pregnancy situation I did not really address in the fic. 
> 
> The story is complete as is, so if you don't want to read the extra head-canons you do not have to, I don't think it takes away enjoyment of the fic if you don't. 
> 
> However, if you're interested in finding out more, then you're of course very welcome to :).


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a Meta-Ramble chapter, where I threw in all of the extra head-canons I had for this AU. I hope you enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for discussion of cheating and a small reference to domestic violence.

My Lovelies,

 

I normally put my bonus head-canons for my fics in the end notes if they don’t quite fit into the actual fic, but my dear prompt-giver FicLogia had some additional questions about the background character’s POV on the entire teenage pregnancy situation and once I started answering it turned out that I actually have a whole bunch of extra head-canons for this fic.

So many, in fact, that I decided to deviate from my normal posting habits and put them into an extra Meta Chapter (one might call it a Ramble Chapter).

I am separating it because the fic is complete as is, but if anyone would like to learn more about what all was going on in the background of this fic, here’s some alternative POV-head-canons for your enjoyment, plus a little outlook on the kids’ futures that was originally in the end-note but that I moved in here because it made more sense.

So, let’s begin with Derek’s family. I said all I had to share about Derek’s parents in the story, but have some more content on his sisters and the estrangement he has/had with both of them.

 

**Cora:**

Cora’s resentment towards Stiles and her estrangement from Derek has a lot to do with the Hale family dynamic per se and her parents’ attitude in particular.

Derek’s father became a stay-at-home Omega after Cora was born, and even though she and Derek are only about two and a half years apart, she was always the baby of the family. As an Omega, Derek was pampered but Cora was spoiled, the typical youngest child who could get away with almost everything and was allowed a lot more than Derek, not just because their parents were more chill, but also because she was an Alpha.

She was used to being the focus at home – not in the overprotective way Derek got to experience but in the baby-of-the-family kind of way.

She was also the most competitive and successful of all kids at sports in school, and Cora’s plans for her Senior Year included getting a scholarship based on her basketball skills.

Then Derek got pregnant and everything changed.

On the day their parents found out, Cora left for school in the morning looking forward to the tacos her father had promised her for dinner in the evening and to having her parents cheer her on during the first competition of the school year that weekend.

When she came home, her father was in tears, her mother was so furious she could barely talk, there were no tacos, and she had to catch a ride with a friend that weekend, because her parents were still of the mindset that this could be fixed and had no attention for anything else.

It stayed that way for a long time.

In fact, Derek’s pregnancy, his refusal to get an abortion, and the months-long radio silence between him and his family made the Hale home a very unpleasant place to be for the entire fall semester and Cora’s resentment grew with each day.

For one, Cora’s Senior Year became little more than an afterthought for her parents, whose only focus for months was Derek, first in anger, then in fear and sadness, because when he didn’t even call them for Thanksgiving Talia and her husband started realizing they could actually lose him.

Cora internalized a lot of that early anger, which was mostly directly at Stiles and his knot. Of course, the fact that she had never liked Stiles much didn’t help either.

Stiles was never really popular and Cora’s group of friends had often made fun of him and Scott in the past. Once word got out that Stiles knocked up her brother, Cora’s friends made fun of _her_ for it and Cora took all of her embarrassment and channeled it into resentment against Stiles.  

Then she ended up not getting the scholarship she’d been counting on and instead of coming to terms with the fact that it was on her and her abilities, she decided it would be easier to blame it on Derek, because his pregnancy was suddenly the only thing that mattered and Cora had gotten swept up in all the anxiety.

Derek’s pregnancy had nothing to do with it, of course. Her chances for the scholarship were never more than 30 percent, tops. She was too proud to admit it, though. And thus began a lifetime of blaming everything on everyone else.

Especially that one time the condom broke during a drunken hook-up in a club in Seattle …

 

**Laura’s POV:**

Laura was in the process of applying for law schools when her father called her in tears to tell her the news and her feelings on Derek’s pregnancy were a lot more conflicted than Cora’s.

On the one hand, she idolized her Alpha mother, to the point of applying for law school just to please her, and her first instinct was to side with her on the issue.

On the other hand, she had grown up protecting her Omega baby-brother, whom she’d always had a better rapport with than with Cora, so she also wanted to be there for him.

Torn between these two instincts, she didn’t really commit to either. Instead, she focused on her law school applications, because there was really no use for her to mess up her life, too, right?

In fact, Laura didn’t really want to think about it at all, because she was also raised to be moderately traditional and even though she didn’t _want_ to judge Derek … she did. Not just for having sex outside of a mating in the first place, but getting pregnant by an underage kid with leftover teenage acne who was not even legal to vote?

She was also angry with him for a while for causing their parents so much grief during the months of radio silence.

Of course she didn’t realize that the radio silence had to do with her mother’s harsh suggestions of the abortion, because none of the four people in that room ever really shared that moment with anyone else.

Without that knowledge, though, it felt to her as if Derek had fucked up and was now abandoning their family for that strange Stilinski kid, who didn’t have control over his own limbs, let alone his knot.

Like Derek, she was really young and a lot of that came from a place of childishness.

Things between her and Derek got better once he actually started talking to their parents again but Stiles … she didn’t truly start warming up to Stiles until he made detective and she realized that Derek’s decision to place his trust in Stiles over their family had been the right one all along.

She tried to make some amends by sending bigger presents for the kids for their birthdays and trying to get to know them better during family celebrations, but by then she’d started her own family and was mostly focusing on her career and those things would always come first.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have some guilt over how she didn’t have Derek’s back when he might have needed his big sister … but she also still judges him for getting into that situation in the first place.

Their relationship status is: complicated. She loves him though. And Derek loves her. They just can’t spend too much time together … too many unsaid things that might bubble to the surface.

 

**Scott and Isaac’s POV:**

Scott and Isaac became the kids’ chosen family as far as uncles/aunts go and filled the gap that was left by Laura never really making the time to be present and Cora and Derek’s estrangement for most of their childhood.

Isaac is never going to be Stiles’ favorite person, personality-wise, but Stiles would still drop anything for the Omega if he called and asked a favor, because anyone who cares about his children so genuinely has earned a spot at the Hale-Stilinski table for life.

Scott and Isaac truly are childless by choice, by the way, as Derek suspected.

Isaac just never wanted kids, period, and Scott … Scott would lie if he said that watching all of the drama that came with his best friend becoming a teenage dad _hadn’t_ played a part in him not wanting kids.

 

**Scott’s POV:**

Speaking of Scott … Scott’s initial reaction was what my people (Germany, land of the thinkers and poets, ha) would describe as “he fell from all clouds” (meaning he was stunned, flabbergasted, beyond surprised) when Stiles told him he was going to be a father.

Here’s the thing. Neither of them were particularly known for being Omega magnets in high school, but if you would have put labels on them, Scott would have been ‘the hot one’ and Stiles would have been ‘the nerdy one’.

Stiles hadn’t kissed anyone until Derek and with the exception of Lydia, Scott had never actually seen him show any interest in anyone in a real way.

Scott, meanwhile, always had someone who wrote him cute notes and love doodles. Sure, he hadn’t actually had sex yet, but there was no question in his mind that one day he’d do that and then he’d tell Stiles all about it and assure him it would happen for him eventually.

He might have even had an entire speech planned. Not out of malice just … because he was concerned for Stiles’ feelings. And secure in the knowledge that he was the hotter friend.

So imagine his shock when he learned that not only did Stiles have sex, he also knocked up the mayor’s son.

Things between them became tense for a while after that revelation.

Scott always had some sort of love related drama. Allison-drama, Kira-drama, you name it. High school level drama, but drama nevertheless. And he’d always been used to Stiles being there for him … to listen to him, to talk him through yet another crisis – even if only one-sided – and to just offer support.

Except suddenly Stiles had no capacity whatsoever to deal with Scott’s drama anymore.

Because Stiles’ life had turned into an actual drama shit-show.

And Scott … didn’t react so well.

With Derek being away at college for the first couple of months of the pregnancy, the entire idea was more of an abstract concept than real to him, so when Stiles pulled away more and more even though Derek wasn’t even around, Scott didn’t fully comprehend just how scared and terrified and stuck in his own brain his best friend was.

Instead, he became jealous. Of Derek, mostly, because most times that Scott didn’t have Stiles to talk to it was because Stiles was on the phone with Derek or thinking about Derek.

And then, when Derek moved in with the Stilinskis, Stiles was always home and didn’t come hang out with Scott anymore, Scott’s jealousy got worse.

He might have been a little jealous of the baby, too, but he’s pushed that part of it all so far down he wouldn’t even remember today.

Things really got out of hand between them during spring break though, when Scott expected Stiles to come hang out with him and play X-box all week, like they’ve done since forever.

Except this year, Stiles had a 34 weeks-ish pregnant Omega at home.

An Omega, who was not in a good place at all, because on top of all his anxieties he was now also sleepless, since a) his belly had gotten so big that sleeping had become an issue and the kid just kicked all the time and kept him up and b) he’d recently started having nightmares of the actual birth.

So Derek was stressed and in turn Stiles was stressed and still just way too young to be able to handle Alpha instincts over a pregnant mate, finishing high school, and worrying about the future all at the same time.

So Stiles didn’t play Xbox with Scott. Stiles had literally a million other things on his mind than playing Xbox. And he told Scott just that. In harsher terms that he would have, had his nerves not been so raw.

After that fight, they weren’t really on speaking terms until prom night, adding to Stiles just having the worst prom experience every.

With him and Scott not speaking and Derek being way too close to the birth for his liking, Stiles hadn’t wanted to go anyways, but Derek begged him to go, thinking that Stiles should at least get that part of the Senior Year experience (Derek wanted to kick himself for that all night, by the way, because he’d seriously overestimated his ability to ignore all the judgmental looks thrown at him and his belly left and right from students, teachers, and chaperones alike).

The fact that Stiles took Derek to prom mended his relationship with Scott though … specifically, the thirty minutes that Derek spent thinking he’d gone into labor.

It was a bonding moment for all three of them, in a way, because Scott followed them outside when a panicked-looking Stiles led Derek behind the gym to get him away from all the noises and stares.

Outside, Stiles had Derek sit down on a bench, where he breathed and panted and waited to see if the Braxton hicks would stop or if it was actual labor. Seeing Stiles hold Derek’s hands for thirty minutes and comforting him, even though Scott could tell that Stiles was beyond terrified … seeing all of that made something inside Scott click.

For months, he hadn’t really been able to empathize with the fears Stiles had been dealing with, but seeing it in the flesh put a lot of things in perspective for Scott and he realized that he’d not been as supportive as he could have been (Stiles also kind of becomes a hero in his eyes after that night. He’d never admit it).

So he apologized to Stiles and they made up and Scott actually ended up missing graduation, too, because when Melissa told him that Derek has been admitted to the hospital Scott hightailed it over there, figuring he should be there if his buddy needed him.

So he sat in the waiting room for almost the entire 18 hours and 35 minutes that Derek was in labor, eventually joined by the Sheriff when he got off his shift.

Scott ended up being the first person besides Derek and Stiles to hold Jack, because John was on a coffee-run when Stiles barged into the waiting area to announce he had an Alpha son.

To this day, Derek and Stiles have no idea that Scott didn’t attend graduation either.

Scott plans to keep it that way, because a lot of the tensions between him and Stiles during Derek’s pregnancy were caused by Scott making the situation about himself – he wasn’t going to repeat that mistake during the birth.

Especially not then.

 

 

**Sheriff’s POV:**

I have always viewed John Stilinski as a good dad at his core, but one that messes up every now and then and sometimes he messes up really, really badly.

In this fic, an earlier mistake came back to haunt him when he found out that Stiles had gotten Derek pregnant.

Here’s this guy who lost his Omega and then spiraled into (I’m going canon here) alcoholism and depression in a way that made him incapable of taking care of his son the way he needed to. I have mentioned that Stiles took on the Omega role in a way when he was really young, because he wanted to take care of his father and subconsciously tried to fill that void his mother had left.

What Stiles doesn’t know is that John has felt guilty about that for years. John is smart, of course he noticed that his child took on the role of an adult because he felt he had to and John should have put a stop to it. He didn’t though … because he needed Stiles to fill that role.

It was selfish and he’s felt horrible about it for years, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop Stiles, enjoying the comfort of someone taking care of him far too much. So he understood that he played a large role in taking parts of Stiles’ childhood away, but he found a reason to make it ok in his mind – by focusing on the fact that Stiles would get part of his childhood back when he went to college and experienced the college life.

And John had all these plans about being a super chill dad – in moderation of course – about all of Stiles’ college shenanigans, because he wanted the kid to feel free and happy and he remembered that that’s what he felt like during college.

And maybe, just maybe, a super awesome college experience would repay Stiles for the years in which he took care of John.

Except then Stiles went and just axed the rest of his childhood by knocking up Derek. And all the hopes John had for him went poof.

So when he asked them if they realized they just fucked up their lives he _did_ mean it – he knew that Stiles’ childhood was irrevocably over now, he knew Talia well and had an idea of what kind of tense family situation Stiles was getting himself into, and he was disappointed that despite all the talks about safe sex this still happened.

A lot of his initial anger was anger at himself, though. Because afterwards, when Stiles had locked himself in his room and Derek was on his way back to college, John took the time to truly examine his feelings and he realized that he was kind of … blaming himself, too.

His inability to cope with his wife’s death pushed Stiles into adulthood much earlier than he would have wanted for him, in a way … and maybe, John thought, just maybe he wouldn’t have become sexually active yet if he’d been in more of a childlike mind-set.

But Stiles had been growing up on the fast track for almost 10 years at that point and him becoming a father was almost the logical next step … so John decided that it was what it was and he had to find a way to deal with it and step up.

Starting with letting Derek stay in his house for basically half the pregnancy, because like hell was he forcing him to live with his parents.

John didn’t know what happened between them exactly, but he knew what tone Talia used with him when she confronted him at the station the day after they all found out and he knew there had to be a reason for why Derek didn’t speak to them for months.

Also … John already buried his wife. He couldn’t deal with losing his kid, too, and he knew Stiles well enough that his Omega and his baby were going to come first now. Even though – John was pretty sure – Stiles didn’t want to be a father at all for the longest time.

Once John got used to the idea, however, he started to soften up towards both of them.

When Derek pulled up at Thanksgiving that year, with horrible store bought pie, jeans that just didn’t fit him anymore, and an expression like he was being led to the slaughter, John couldn’t help but feel protective of this kid, who was just as terrified as his own son.

His decision to let Derek stay with them for the spring semester was sealed after dinner that night, when they were sitting in front of the television watching the game.

Derek let out a little gasp and told Stiles that the baby was moving again. He smiled, too, the first smile John had seen on the kid’s face in a while, and Stiles’ own smile was so full of relief that John’s heart hurt.

Stiles bent down and pushed his cheek against Derek’s belly, staying like that for the rest of the game. Derek patted his hair and smiled, but when he looked back at the screen his expression changed to one of utter sadness and loneliness.

John couldn’t stand to see that loneliness, feeling it deep inside his core.

He was still so very worried though. And he felt guilty. Plus a little disappointed, he couldn’t help it.

So what Derek perceived as his disapproval was more a mixture of really complicated emotions that John couldn’t bring himself to voice.

Ironically, they both felt like they stole Stiles’ childhood in different ways and could have bonded over it … had either been courageous and willing enough to admit it to the other.

John left his disappointment behind when he held Jack for the first time, though. He could have held on to it, sure, but John really didn’t see the point when his energy would have been better spent loving on that perfect little grandson of his.

Having Derek, Stiles, and Jack living under his roof for the first four months of Jack’s life was chaotic and tiring at times, of course, and there might have been some snapping and some harsh words, but John couldn’t help but feel impressed at how good they both were at this, despite all the anxiety beforehand.

It was their dedication to being parents that was mostly responsible for John’s reaction to Derek’s second pregnancy, when his heartfelt “Aww hell, you idiots!” was born more from worry than actual anger.

He knew they could do it again … he just wished it could have gotten easier for them, first.

John was still supportive though. He loved his son. He loved that Derek made him happy. And he went and knocked some much needed sense into Derek’s parents’ heads after the almost break-up, urging them to help out more and reminding them that it wasn’t just their kids who needed help but their grandsons, too.

John did get angry, however, when Stiles and Derek announced Gracie and he is not ashamed of it, even though he also loves her to pieces.

Unplanned pregnancies are one thing and John had long come to the realization that being angry about those wouldn’t help anyone … but consciously planning a third child not quite half a year after they almost broke up, Derek just getting started in his career, Stiles planning to go back to school, and general chaos and mayhem with two little children in the home already … nope.

John did not understand his kid’s reasoning one tiny bit. He also strongly suspected that _Stiles_ didn’t fully understand his reasoning there.

He wasn’t angry when Derek and Stiles told him about the twins, though. Instead, he almost choked on a piece of chicken in his shock.

John thought that his kid was done surprising him … he should have known better.

Once he realized they were happy about it he was ecstatic, though … he missed having little ones around and retirement was just a little too boring for his taste.

 

 

Finally, **Stiles’ POV:**

Now, I already put quite a bit of Stiles’ POV in the actual fic, so there’s not much to add about how he felt about the pregnancy. However, what I only alluded to were that thing with Malia and how he felt for most of the 2018 parts of this fic.

 

**A word of WARNING (in bold, just to make sure) – if you don’t want to read anything about Stiles’ feelings towards the entire Malia situation, I recommend skipping the part in italics.**

…

 

…

 

…

 

_Stiles did **not** cheat on Derek with Malia. _

_He would have though. Eventually. And he knows it as well as Derek did._

_As far as cheating goes, I am of the mind that there is never a justification for it. There are often reasons though … and every now and then those reasons are quite easy to empathize with._

_Imagine Stiles’ situation as follows. You know how it feels like when you’re really stressed in your job or school and you’re just running, running, running for long periods of time and looking forward to your vacation and then bam, two days into your vacation you’re super sick, because your body knows that it can finally take the luxury to react to all the stress you put it under, now that the stress is gone?_

_That’s kind of what life was like for Stiles in the fall of 1998. He’d been running for five years. Nonstop._

_The pregnancy, high school, having an infant in college, the second pregnancy, college, having two kids while finishing college, moving multiple times in between and then Derek starting to work and changing the status quo yet again._

_Stiles had been running on fumes for a long time and when he graduated and didn’t find a job he suddenly found himself with a lot of free time to think._

_Meaning that all the sadness, fear, and occasionally even loneliness (he’d had his family at college, sure, but he always felt he’d existed in a parallel universe from his classmates), in short, all the feelings he’d been pushing down hard in the past five years came back up to fester, making him a little heart and soul-sick._

_He also finally got to take a breath – and Malia became the physical embodiment of that breath for him._

_She was fun. She was cute yet sassy. She came without baggage. She wanted him. And it was tempting._

_Stiles thought about doing it. He fantasized about it more than once._

_The fact that he and Derek were going through a dry-spell and weren’t communicating about it didn’t help._

_Because Stiles had no idea that his Omega kept getting ‘headaches’ all of a sudden because he’d started feeling self-conscious about still not being back to having a flat belly and even having gotten a bit chubbier instead because of all the stress eating._

_Stiles could have realized it, maybe, if he’d really paid attention, but he was too exhausted to pay attention and instead he felt rejected. So his fantasies became more explicit. And when Malia wrote her number on his folder he knew it was going to happen sooner rather than later._

_Except … Derek found out about it. And the fight got so bad that night because Stiles knew that Derek knew that it had only been a matter of days before Stiles would have gone and cheated on him._

_Stiles knew that Derek’s freak-out was legitimate. However, instead of owning up to it, he chose to unload all of his bad emotions of the past five years on Derek in that moment._

_And Derek gave back as good as he got._

_Then Derek packed up their kids and just left and Stiles was almost relieved he did it, because that meant he could spin the narrative with Derek being the bad guy, the one who just went and took the kids away even though nothing had happened._

_He told that story exactly one time. When he went to get sympathy from his Dad._

_John knew his kid, though. John also frequented the café where Malia worked and John had heard stuff lately, because Beacon Hills was small and people gossiped._

_So John wasted no time to confront Stiles about Malia and very quickly got to the bottom of the truth._

_He didn’t wait for Stiles to admit it, though._

_Instead, he told him flat out that maybe leaving Derek was the best decision._

_As far as John was concerned, if Stiles was so unhappy with Derek that he’d even consider cheating, then it was better to let him go._

_Derek did not deserve being cheated on. No one did, in fact, and John told Stiles that he needed to do some serious soul searching to figure out if leaving Derek was what he truly wanted._

_He gave him two choices – find a way to fix it or make a clean break and accept the consequences._

_Stiles really broke down when John’s voice turned gentle and he told him it was okay to leave – but only if he did it in a responsible way._

_Except nothing was okay anymore, and Stiles wanted things to be okay again desperately._

_He didn’t go talk to Derek for three days because he was scared that Derek wouldn’t take him back without at least a plan for how to make things okay again._

_When he still didn’t have a plan after three days he couldn’t stand it any longer though and so he went to the motel, where Derek opened the door looking like someone had died._

_Seeing Derek so heartbroken did a number on Stiles on its own – what really undid him, though, was the way the boys looked at him._

_Because his sons, his precious little boys, they both looked at him like Scott had looked at his father after he’d put Melissa in the hospital, just before the separation._

_They looked at him as if he’d seriously hurt their papa._

_And Stiles never wanted to be on the receiving end of such a look ever again. So he devoted his everything to fixing it and he and Derek succeeded together._

 

 

Now, on to Stiles’ POV during the days that Derek spent hiding the pregnancy.

 

First off, Stiles LOVED having the house and Derek to himself.

Loved it. So much.

No longer having to get up at ass-crack of dawn even on his days off to make sure his daughter got her butt to school because an alarm-clock to actually rouse her had yet to be invented?

Stiles was a fan.

No more discussions about anyone borrowing his car?

Yes, thank you.

No more having to be quiet during orgasms because a kid about to be traumatized might be traipsing down to the kitchen for a late-night snack and passing their door on the way?

 _Boy howdy_ , did Stiles like that one, coincidentally in these terms.

Getting to fuck Derek on every surface of the house like he’d planned since the day they moved in it?

So amazing. No words. Especially because he’d been waiting for the opportunity for the entire 18-year span that they’d lived inside the house, because he’d seriously underestimated the cockblocking qualities of three children teaming up against their parents.

So, to quote the Lego movie, everything was awesome.

Except for the part where Stiles missed his kids like crazy and seriously thought about buying dolby surround systems for all the rooms so the house wouldn’t be so damn quiet all the time.

Also … despite loving him more than his life, being alone with Derek after they’d essentially never been alone _ever_ was a bit … terrifying.

Stiles did _not_ count those first four pre-pregnancy awareness months, by the way. The first six weeks were spent more on the phone than not and sneaking around town whenever Stiles caught a break from his summer gig at the arcade, because Derek’s parents weren’t cool about him dating and Derek wanted to ease them into the idea (Stiles can laugh about that now. Derek mostly winces when he remembers).

Plus, they weren’t really alone for the next ten weeks either, because Jack-The-Embryo was hanging out right with them, plus Derek went back to college and that’s three-ish weeks out of the four months total in which they didn’t’ see each other at all.

So no, Stiles wasn’t counting all of that.

Meaning that it felt like he’d never actually really, truly been alone with Derek, meaning that Derek never really got a chance to truly focus all of his attention on him and realize … that he could have done better.

This, of course, wasn’t a thought he had often. He knew that Derek loved him, he knew what they accomplished together despite the circumstances, and he knew that he was successful at his job and that Derek was very proud of him.

However, he also knew that Derek grew up in a different environment than him, even though they both attended the same school. Having the mayor for a mother meant that Derek was exposed to a lot more well-to-do people than Stiles was, and he knows that Derek’s parents were fully expecting him to marry into that social circle.

Someone like Jackson Whittemore, for example, who owned two Porsches before he could even drive legally and went on to have a very successful career and five more Porsches.

Also, Stiles was reasonably sure he hadn’t really aged well. Sure, he still had a full head of hair and didn’t inherit his dad’s receding hairline and bald spots, but lately he’d been finding a little too many grey hairs for his liking, spreading even quicker than his wrinkles.

Not to mention the beginning of a Dad-bod he’d been cultivating recently, just a little thicker all around and with a little belly-paunch in the making that Stiles was _not_ particularly fond of.

All of this was in the back of his mind during that week before Christmas, in which he went through his own share of conflicting emotions.

When Derek first started throwing up Stiles did believe it was just a case of the stomach flu – been there, done that, many times, both with the kids and with his fifth-grade teacher husband.

When Derek came home the next night looking like someone had run him over with a truck, Stiles was still concerned, but since Derek went straight to bed he just figured to let him get some rest and sleep it off.

It was the day after that he started getting worried. When Derek came home from work and crashed out on the couch for hours, only to go to bed and then promptly crash out again. It wasn’t so much the sleeping that worried Stiles but the way in which Derek avoided making eye contact in between. The way he didn’t come snuggle up with him in bed, even though Derek had always craved snuggles whenever he felt crappy before.

Stiles could tell that his Omega was worried about something and he didn’t want to push him, since pushing Derek usually just made things worse. When the kids came home a day earlier and not even their presence could snap Derek out of it, Stiles’ worries turned into full on anxiety.

Stiles watched his husband carefully while they picked out a tree and he noticed that Derek’s smile would slip off his lips the moment he felt nobody was watching him. He noticed how he just nipped at his cocoa, even though he loves cocoa. Stiles was reasonably sure it wasn’t the flu, either, because Derek hadn’t mentioned anything about his stomach being upset since that first day.

It was official – his husband was acting really weird and he was hiding something.

And so Stiles did what he usually did – going through the worst-case scenarios and inadvertently projecting all of his fears onto Derek.

He quickly concluded that Derek was unhappy with their new living situation after all, because what other reason could there be, really?

The maddening thing was, that Stiles had no idea what had changed all of a sudden. All he knew was that they had last cuddled five days before Christmas and now it was Christmas Eve and the last time they went so long without cuddling was when they almost broke up.

Of course Stiles wasn’t going to bring it up, because he didn’t want to ruin Christmas for the kids, so he put his best poker face on and tried not to think about it during dinner that night. His job had made him quite adapt at hiding his true feelings, so he figured he was pretty successful – right up until Derek bolted away from the table looking like his heart was being torn out (yes, Stiles is dramatic, but it’s _Derek_ and Derek isn’t allowed to look like that ever).

As he led his pale, dizzy Omega back to the couch, a new terrifying scenario developed in Stiles’ mind, one he hadn’t even considered earlier, because it was just so firmly in the ‘no!’ category.

Maybe Derek was hiding that he was actually seriously ill? It would fit, too, because his Omega was always a bit of a martyr when it came to his own health and he would have never ruined their babies’ Christmas with declarations that he only had days to live.

It’s possible that a small part of Stiles’ brain knew that the words ‘days to live’ were probably a bit too dramatic, but his Alpha instincts just went running with them.

Before they could really pick up steam, however, Derek revealed he was pregnant and if Stiles hadn’t been kneeling he would have sat down on his butt. Hard.

Because _that_ , ladies and gentlemen, was a reason he wouldn’t have considered even if someone had suggested it to him.

Faced between the choices ‘Derek is so unhappy he’s thinking about leaving me’, ‘Derek is dying’, and ‘Derek is pregnant with my baby’, Stiles felt he lucked out, however, and the relief made him lightheaded.

So lightheaded, in fact, that he almost missed the scared look on his Omega’s face and the tension in his hands where he was cradling his belly. When he did notice, though, he almost wanted to shake the sense right into him. Only you don’t shake people, pregnant or otherwise, so he went into relief-babble-mode instead.

Of course the rest of the night turned out a bit too dramatic for Stiles to fully explore all of his feelings, but when he woke up on Christmas day with his Omega in his arms and his hands resting protectively on the gentle swell of his belly, Stiles was overcome with so much happiness it almost took his breath away.

He still made an appointment at the urology clinic though, wrote it on a piece of paper and presented it to Derek as a Christmas gift (he was also really glad Derek was carrying twins, because Stiles figures if they’d had just one it would have taken a year tops before they would have had the grandiose idea to try for a fifth child, so the kid wouldn’t be lonely all the time. Practical and smart conception planning, thy name is Stiles Stilinski. A 9-months pregnant Derek pinched his nipples when he voiced that idea).

Stiles then applied himself to appreciate Derek for the rest of the pregnancy (their adult-level-sexy-time-skills came in handy, for sure).

As far as Derek’s pregnancies went, Stiles would say this last one was his favorite and Derek would agree. Sure, Derek could tell he wasn’t twenty anymore – the aches and pains were just a bit more troublesome than when he carried their older kids and he got tired a lot quicker than he used to, even compared to taking care of two little ones while in his third trimester with Gracie.

However, neither of them realized how truly relaxing the experience would be while not having to worry about a single thing other than the pregnancy (which Kira had under careful observation due to all the risk factors).

So they went for the ultimate experience – in moderation, of course, given the twin-situation.

They went on a tiny baby-moon, they had a baby-shower, they took their time decorating and painting the nursery, they did belly-casts, Derek went to pre-natal Yoga and massages as often as his heart desired, they did a photo-shoot with all the kids present, and Stiles even went and got Derek a push-present, because he had money for stuff like that now, even though Derek still rolled his eyes at the concept.

In short, they were blissfully happy and that’s how it should be.

 

Now, on to the kid’s futures, roughly 18 years after the events of this fic, so we’d be in 2036.

 

**Jack (now 42):**

 

I imagine that Jack didn't get mated until his late 30s, partly because he just never found the right one and also because he was the one who consciously remembers the most of Derek and Stiles' struggles as teenage/college student parents and he just always wanted to live his life first.

He's very happy with his Omega Alicia now and they have three gorgeous Omega girls, Anya (age 4), Annaleigh (2), and Abby (5 months). His siblings keep teasing him about his daughters having A-names like his wife, but Jack's a total sap and just wanted to honor his Omega.

He also tried out a couple of different careers before he ended up going into law enforcement, just like his Alpha father. He's the Sheriff of Beacon Hills now and while Derek and Stiles aren't quite happy about their baby-boy putting himself in danger all the time, they do appreciate that he lives closer again and they get to see their gorgeous granddaughters as often as they want. 

 

 

**Bennett (now 39):**

Bennett also didn't start having children until his late 30s but he's been with his Alpha, Jessica, ever since his Junior Year of college. Jessie is 7 years older than him and she was going for her PhD in physics when they met for the first time in a bar in Bennett’s college town, just a week after the ultrasound gender reveal.

They were attracted to each other at first sight, but Bennett knew he’d be spending the summer at home to be with his family and await the birth of the twins. Therefore, they only went on a couple of dates and Bennett told her that if she wanted to go on another one when he came back for his Senior year, he’d love it. Derek and Stiles kind of figured out their Omega son was in love, but they also noticed he wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, and with all the pregnancy stuff going on, they didn’t push.

Once Bennett officially introduced her, Derek and Stiles were a bit worried about the age difference, because they thought she'd start pushing Bennett into a mating and having kids before he was ready.

They held their tongues and observed, however, not wanting to make their parent's mistakes and trusting Bennett to know what's best for him. Jessica proved all of their fears wrong by encouraging Bennett to go for the PhD as well instead of having babies and they only got married after Bennett secured his tenure-track position, when he was 31 and she was 38.

Bennett is currently on a long paternity sabbatical, because he and Jessica decided to grow their family once he got tenure. Of course they didn't quite plan for their own Oopsie-Baby situation, because Bennett ended up getting pregnant with number two only six weeks after having number one (Jessica took a page out of grandpa Stiles' playbook and got snipped after their second child was born. Bennett is very okay with it). So for now, Bennett is happy being a stay-at-home-Omega with their little Omega son Preston (18 months) and their little Alpha daughter Rylie (7 months), but he can't wait to go back to work. 

 

**Gracie (now 36):**

 

Gracie had her own life-changing moment at the beginning of her Sophomore Year of College when she fell in love with another Alpha and realized she was bisexual. She almost made her fathers have a coronary though, because she came home for Christmas that year and declared she had something she needed to tell them.

With one five-months old baby in the crook of each arm and Gracie being just as old as Derek was when he got pregnant, Stiles automatically had babies on the brain and thought she'd knocked up someone, so he was halfway into giving her a tearful speech peppered with declarations of support and barely hidden panic before she got a word in and finally managed to come out.

Although Gracie told Kira she wasn't considering the field of OBGYN, spending so much time with Derek while he was in his third trimester with her baby siblings eventually made her go for pre-med and she did in fact end up becoming an OBGYN (she looked at Derek's ultrasound pics from the twins while she was a resident and couldn't believe she'd actually gotten their genders so wrong).

She's been in a happy relationship with an Alpha named Joshua for five years now and still doesn't plan to have children, but she always considered the twins her honorary kids in a way and she loves and adores her nieces and nephew, so there's no shortage of babies in her life. 

 

 

**Finn and Eve (now 18):**

Finn and Eve are 18 years old and just left for college. Neither is sure about their career path yet, but they've got a lot of time still to figure it out. Derek and Stiles are happy to let them, aware that they're a bit more lenient with them (and always have) but trusting that they make great kids who can sort it all out. 

 

**Derek and Stiles (now 63 and 61 respectively)**

Derek and Stiles, meanwhile, drove down to San Diego and got on a cruise ship the minute the twins were out the door and they've been travelling ever since.

They are still very much in love and even though they enjoy finally being alone every now and then, they still can't wait to snuggle their grandbabies once they get back home and steal them for sleep-overs.

Their house will never be empty and they wouldn't have it any other way.

 

 

And that, my dear lovely readers, are all the head-canons I had in the back of my mind that didn’t make it into the fic! I hope you enjoyed finding out a bit more about my take on this AU :). 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Thank you so much for reading!
> 
>  
> 
> Edited March 7th, 2018: I have added a second chapter that is not an actual second chapter as part of the narrative but instead a collection of extra Headcanons for this AU, including the POV for multiple characters in here whose dealings with the teen pregnancy situation I did not really address in the fic. 
> 
> The story is complete as is, so if you don't want to read the extra head-canons you do not have to, I don't think it takes away enjoyment of the fic if you don't. 
> 
> However, if you're interested in finding out more, then you're of course very welcome to :).


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